THIS is the open fraud of Social Security, that most Americans are disgracefully unaware of:
Social Security status-quo defenders have assured us for the past 25 years that Social Security is fully funded—for the next 25 years, or 2036. So if there are real assets in the Social Security Trust Fund—$2.6 trillion allegedly—then how could failure to reach a debt-ceiling agreement possibly threaten seniors’ Social Security checks?
The answer is that the federal government has borrowed all of that trust fund money and spent it, exactly as Krauthammer asserted. And the only way the trust fund can get some cash to pay Social Security benefits is if the federal government draws it from general revenues or borrows the money—which, of course, it can’t do because of the debt ceiling.
What Happened to the Social Security Trust Fund — Merrill Matthews’ “Right Directions Blog”, Forbes
American citizens have the power to vote for representatives to run the government — and consequently, a moral obligation to learn and understand how important parts of our system work. The fact that most Americans don’t understand that there is nothing (and can be nothing) in the “Social Security Trust Fund” represents a massive failure of the most basic level of civic responsibility that comes along with the right of self-governance. For that reason, those who have abdicated this responsibility have no right to claim to be innocent victims when they finally do learn that Social Security is a government-run Ponzi Scheme with no actual assets. And they have no right to complain when it’s revealed that they’ve already lost everything that’s been taken from them in payroll taxes over the years.
The fact of the matter is that there is nothing in the trust fund but IOUs — that is, notes offering to raise the money to pay them back through further borrowing or taxes. If you don’t fully understand what that means, then take a moment to really consider it. Consider the outrageous injustice of the government taxing you to pay for your retirement, and then borrowing that money from itself and spending it — leaving a note in its place that it’ll just tax you and your children again tomorrow to pay you back for the taxes that it borrowed from you and your parents yesterday. That was money that you could otherwise have saved and invested to pay for your own retirement, without the need for government alms, and could have left to your heirs. Instead, it’s been squandered in an orgy of reckless government spending the like of which has never before been seen in all of human history, bringing the United States to the very brink of financial armageddon.
The money that we all paid in Social Security taxes over the years has already been spent. It is long gone. The only way to pay current recipients is to rip off the next generation, which has no chance of ever being repaid for its contributions. Well, if someone has to take the hit and not be repaid — and someone does, with any Ponzi Scheme when it finally collapses — then it should be the current and pending generations of recipients. They are the ones who are responsible for allowing such a corrupt system to continue for so long, and who fought against efforts to reform it in the previous decade. It should not be the innocent next generation that they’re planning to hand the tab for their reckless irresponsibility.