| mrstickball said: Interesting. The government takes the peoples money, uses it to fund their deficit, then pays a meager interest rate out. Given the fact that they also print the money, am I just a little befuddled as to how such a system even works? We loan money from China at a much higher interest rate. |
The Social Security "surpluss" is a bunch of US government IOUs in the form of treasury bonds. I don't think we borrow money from China at a higher rate, China buys the same US treasury bonds everyone else does, including the Social Security trust fund. US treasury bonds can pay a relatively small rate over inflation becuase they are so secure.
Under our current laws, what else could the government do with the SS trustfund's surpluss? Investing in private companies would almost be nationalization. Even if we allowed it, the oversight would be nightmarish. Was that investment "politicaly motivated"?
I guess an alternative use of SS surpluss money would be to lend it to banks that in turn lend it to home buyers or for student loans. But those are also low interest loans.
Yet, today, America's leaders are reenacting every folly that brought these great powers [Russia, Germany, and Japan] to ruin -- from arrogance and hubris, to assertions of global hegemony, to imperial overstretch, to trumpeting new 'crusades,' to handing out war guarantees to regions and countries where Americans have never fought before. We are piling up the kind of commitments that produced the greatest disasters of the twentieth century.
— Pat Buchanan – A Republic, Not an Empire
