The “surplus” was always a fiction. It was always tax and spend. There never was any “investment” other than empty government promises.
Excuse me, but there was a sustantial yearly surplus for about two decades beginning in the mid 80s. SS taxes brought in more than was needed to make curren SS payments. But instead of saving the surplus, govt - D and R - used it for general govt programs
OK, they lied to us. They’re still liable to make good on the promises.
Easiest thing to do is stop any and all payments to illegals, foreign counties and paychecks to congress people who were in on the fraud...
The “surplus” was always a fiction. It was always tax and spend. There never was any “investment” other than empty government promises.
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If only we had elected Gore, it would be safely tucked away in a lock box right now.
“The “surplus” was always a fiction. It was always tax and spend. There never was any “investment” other than empty government promises.”
I agree. Many people view social security as sort of a mandatory 401K in which the government is saving your money for you. It’s just not true. It’s just another tax program, and the money goes into the same mash pit as the rest that comes into the government. Just because it came in as ‘FICA’ doesn’t mean it gets put into some special account. It’s not your money. It’s theirs.
My parents both worked, for many decades, and both paid into social security. When my father died, my mother had to choose which social security account she would receive money from, hers or my fathers. If they had been allowed to put that same FICA money into personal investment accounts, she would have the money generated from both their working efforts, not just from one of them. I only include this because it illustrates how it isn’t ‘your money’ being saved for you. It’s their money, and they make the rules how much you’ll ever see.
We can come up with much better options, while also being faithful to the commitments the government made when it started taking money out of your paycheck for FICA.