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Politics : Mainstream Politics and Economics -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Farmboy who wrote (13199)	3/20/2012 10:51:45 PM
From: Bearcatbob	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 85487

" IF they government stopped taking from it .. for general spending on other things. But they won't stop .. so it will probably not even last until then." During the surplus years where should the money have gone - Algore's lock box? monitor.net

To: Farmboy who wrote (13199)	3/20/2012 11:54:46 PM
From: TimF	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 85487

IF they government stopped taking from it .. for general spending on other things. But they won't stop . In a sense they can't. I'm not talking about a compulsion to spend (although sometimes it seems like they have that), or the politics of situations driving them to spend (although that is common), but the fact that any SS "surplus" has to be put in to T-bills, which means it has to be money that's available for the government to spend. Now available to spend doesn't mean they have to spend it. They could use it (when such a surplus still existed) to buy down federal debt (until there wasn't any left, which in practice probably wouldn't be reached), but what doesn't happen is that it sits in some account for SS unused (it can't be put in any private account or an account run by another government, so it wouldn't be earning any interest, better to pay down debt and save interest than to just remove that amount of money from circulation). When it's paying out more than it takes in - AND the government is robbing it for other purposes Actually both of those things don't happen at once. It's one or the other. Essentially always one or the other (unless the SS tax exactly equaled SS spending). If the tax is higher than the spending, the extra money gets used for something else. If its lower than the spending, in other words when its paying out more than it takes in, than other tax money or borrowing (which is happening right now) is used to cover the difference.

To: Farmboy who wrote (13199)	3/21/2012 11:19:38 AM
From: Steve Lokness	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 85487

<<<<When it's paying out more than it takes in - AND the government is robbing it for other purposes>>>> When the government borrows money from China - are they "robbing it for other purposes"? It is the exact same borrowed instrument. If you don't like the government borrowing more than they spend - then you should be critical of Bush. He took the trend towards a balanced budget that Clinton (or Gingrich - if you would rather find that more acceptable) put in place and Bush decreased taxes and started two endless wars. Endless wars NOT paid for. They paid for the wars by borrowing from the SS surplus. ...........By the way. Do you know how Clinton was able to achieve that favorable trend towards a balanced budget? He raised taxes and decreased military spending.