Re: OT: Official 'Why Zarqawi and why now?' thread

See, this is the type of post that I really shouldn't reply to. You don't
bother to reproduce my post and interleave your comments. Why? Because you
have absolutely no answer to the points I have made. Instead you write a
short essay, most of which has nothing to do with what I said, and none of
which is responsive to the points I made. Further comments interleaved.

"John A. Fish" <jrh@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:4488E1D9.7090702@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
You disappoint me William. I never said I supported the irresponsible
spending of the Bush administration.

Did I say you did??? Here is precisely what you said --

"As opposed to spending the money and increasing the national debt with the
pyramid scheme that we now have?"

This is pure nonsense. The current social security scheme does not increase
the national debt, and the social security scheme is most definitely not a
pyramid or ponzi scheme. In a ponzi scheme, someone is left holding the bag
and gets nothing. That is most emphatically not the case with social
security. As I have said at least 100 times on this newsgroup, there is
enough money in the social security trust fund to pay all promised benefits
for the next 40 years. When the trust fund is exhausted, FICA tax revenues
alone will pay about 80% of promised benefits, EVEN IF NO CHANGES ARE MADE
TO PROMISED BENEFITS OR FICA TAX RATES IN THE NEXT FORTY YEARS.

Getting 80% of what you were promised is not nothing, so please discontinue
the pyramid and ponzi bull***.

So my response outlining the fiscal irresponsibility of the Bush Crime
Family was entirely appropriate, given that you were somehow claiming that
social security was somehow increasing the national debt.

Read what I actually said. Is spending on education not several times
higher per student now than it was 30 years ago in terms of real dollars?

I don't know if that's correct, but did I contest that assertion?

Is the money that workers currently pay to social security not being spent
by the government?

Yes, but the money is replaced with interest bearing bonds with zero risk
which can be turned in at any time for cash from the U.S. Treasury.

If small amounts were invested instead, under the control of the
individual, would that not be money invested and not spent?

Are you totally clueless? The money does not just get spent and disappear,
it is invested in interest bearing government bonds. A couple of years ago,
the SS Trust Fund was earning a return of about 6% on its total bond
portfolio. It is probably down to about 5% now.

I know you can figure this out because I know that you have an I.Q. that
cannot even be measured.

Here is a thought experiment for you William related to the so-call social
security lockbox. Assume that there are two possible realities, one where
the lock box exists and is full of these bonds that you say it has. Now
consider another reality where the lock box does not exist, say it was
destroyed in some fire and all the bonds are gone. Does the second
reality change one bit the obligations of the federal government (or the
taxpayers if you prefer) regarding the financial resources of the
government and it's ability to pay what is promised to the intended
recipients and the ultimate cost of these obligations to the population at
large?

If you are asking if the Social Security Trust Fund contains assets which
can be converted to cash (other than from the U.S. treasury, of course),
which the government can use to meet its financial obligations to current
and future retirees, the answer is no. Yes, the liquidation of these bonds
will impose a significant additional burden on the federal budget and
federal taxpayers. But these are simply government bonds. If the SSA
didn't hold them, someone else would, and these bonds would eventually have
to be redeemed.

The issue here is the full faith and credit of the U.S. Government. Is the
government going to keep the promises to pay which each bond in the trust
fund represents, or are conservatives like you going to be able to convince
enough people that the trust fund doesn't really exist, and it will just
cost too much money to redeem these bonds?

So tell me now William, is there a lock box or not?

If you mean is there a physical filing cabinet where the originals of every
bond reside, specifying the principal amount, interest rate, and maturity
date, the answer is yes.

If you mean does the social security lock box exist as proposed by Al
Gore -- that is that the government should run a surplus and pay down the
national debt, so we don't have to use the social security surplus to help
cover the shortfall between taxes and expenditures, the answer is no.

You do understand that when the government is running a real surplus, even
after subtracting out the social security surplus, as it did in 2000, that
the government is in no way using the social security surplus to finance its
operations.

Now, ask yourself this question, if the social security lock box is in fact
in effect, and the government is in no way using the social security surplus
to finance its operations, does that in any way affect the status of the
trust fund, in terms of the dollar value of the assets which it holds,
compared to the current situation where we have a large budget deficit, and
the social security surplus is used to reduce the size of the reported
deficit?

The answer is obviously no. The trust fund will still contain the exact
same bonds bearing the exact same interest rates.

So all this ranting and raving about the fact that the government has
already spent the money that taxpayers have paid into the trust fund is
nonsense. In some sense, yes, the government has spent the money, but that
fact does not alter the viability of the trust fund or the value of its
assets, compared to the situation where the government is running a true
surplus and not relying on the social security trust fund to fund its
operations.


William Coleman (ramashiva)


.