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To: 2ndDivisionVet
Clinton:
I think for us to act like Social Security is in crisis is a Republican trap.
In fact, the system is headed for nearly certain collapse unless some action is taken to increase taxes or at least slow down the projected rise of future benefits. And delay will only make the eventual corrections more painful, experts say.
The reality is that the Social Security Trust Fund "exists" in exactly the same sense that the government has the ability to print the dollars it has promised. It has already done so, in the form of the IOUs it has placed in the SSTF - but as long as those IOUs are sequestered in the SSTF they have no meaning. When the Retirement Boom hits with now-looming 67th anniversary of the Baby Boom, the cash flow of Social Security will turn negative - and become a drag on current accounts instead of the lift that it has heretofore been (it's what always happens to Ponzi schemes when - as is mathematically inevitable - the pool of untapped suckers dries up).

The "safe government bonds" in the SSTF are a liability to the Treasury, and constitute printing press monetary inflation when the SSTF is "tapped" to pay retirement benefits. So the issue looming in this generation is how the government is to get the revenue up and hold the government's expenses down enough to avoid a Weimar Republic style hyperinflation.

And the magical thinking which got us into this pickle will continue, and will lead the Democratic Party to demand tax rate hikes which - inasmuch as tax rates are already approximately at the point of negative returns - can only exacerbate the problem. It simply is not possible to increase government revenue by taxing employers out of existence.

Reality is "a Republican trap."


16 posted on 11/04/2007 5:57:45 AM PST by conservatism_IS_compassion (The idea around which liberalism coheres is that NOTHING actually matters except PR.)
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To: All

I get the impression that the MSM is making a fake effort to derail Hillary’s nomination but it’ll only last a month or two and then it’ll be a love feast.......


17 posted on 11/04/2007 6:21:30 AM PST by Doofer (Fred Dalton Thompson For President)
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