Social Security is a pay as you go cash-flow system, regardless of the accounting fiction of a trust fund.
Why? Because it holds no assets except IOUs from the government which has spent surplus funds.
Amazingly, before LBJ needed mucho money, Social Security actually held resalable financial assets (Top quality bonds). It was also much smaller.
Incorrect.
The money had already been spent.
The same entity cannot own a bond and owe the debt for it.
The government had kept double books since F-ingDR’s time, something they would put you or I into jail for.
What LBJ started spending was not an asset, it was all valueless ink exactly offset by other in, or rather it was inflating the money supply on the sly. As usual that resulted in savers eating the loss of value.
Is it then a coincidence that when the funny money (even compared to the funny money from nothing it otherwise is) ran out in Reagan’s time that inflation came down and hasn’t been that bad since?