Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Politics : The Trump Presidency -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Wharf Rat who wrote (69902)	5/4/2018 4:22:47 PM
From: TimF	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 363067

No; it's a separate entity that the general fund can borrow from. Yes the "general fund" or "treasury" or whatever you want to call it can borrow from the SS trust fund, and then pay it back. But when it borrows it just means SS tax payers are putting money in (that gets spent right away), and when it pays it back it just current taxes or borrowing going to pay it back. In neither case does the trust fund reduce borrowing by the federal government. Well, the SSTF is one of those Americans. Its an American fund sure, but its existence doesn't change the level of borrowing for the government as a whole, and it doesn't over time change how much of that borrowing is from Americans. You borrow from the trust fund now, or you didn't borrow those specific dollars from a foreign source, but the general fund is paying interest and principle on it and its borrowing that money from foreign sources. Then later (now actually, more so going forward) the flow reverses and more non-social security revenue has to go back to pay for SS benefits. The trust fund doesn't really do much about borrowing at all. The SS tax revenue did reduce borrowing, just as anything else which produces net tax revenue does. But it would have done so to the same degree if it was collected without any trust fund structure. At every point of SS's history every dollar of benefit's it paid was paid for by tax revenue or by current tax revenue or external non-governmental borrowing.