..........In the article, Mr. Sloan said: "When the time comes to convert those bonds into cash, the government will have to redeem them by borrowing from private investors, cutting expenses or increasing income."
..........What Mr. Sloan failed to mention was that this is all the same. It all comes from the same source. In every instance, no matter how you cut it, the money will come from you, the taxpayer. It will all come out of your annual income tax payments. No place else. Here's why:
..........1. Increasing income: We all know what this is, right? In its honest version, it means raising individual and company income taxes.
..........2. Cutting expenses means spending less in areas of the discretionary budget. Taking the money away from allocations to education, agriculture, defense or other things for which we all pay income taxes. While it doesn't raise taxes, we do get less bang for the buck. And, if these allocations were truly important (aren't they all supposed to be?) the government will have to raise our income taxes to provide them.
..........3. Borrowing from private investors: This means selling Treasury securities on the open market to raise more money. It's what causes deficits by the "unified budget" way of accounting. To pay off or redeem bonds in federal trust funds, it is also the same as moving debt from one credit card to another, piling debt on top of debt. The same as the current money laundering plans to pay off the national debt with your retirement money. It may put off the day of reckoning, but eventually these funds are redeemed by the tax paying public, with interest. Like the entire national debt, this final payoff money will come out of the general fund of income tax dollars. Again, we get less bang for the buck unless the government raises income taxes (#1, above) to make up for it.
..........Unfortunately, #1 above also includes the dishonest way to increase revenue. It includes scaring the public and making them believe that entitlement taxes must be increased or benefits reduced. Since there is not a single entitlement without a surplus already, either trick will result in more cash to steal.
..........Taxpayers will believe that they are contributing to retirement, health care, prescription drugs, highway maintenance and construction, better and safer airports and so forth—while the government steals these overpayments and uses the money wherever they want. It doesn't matter whether it's for pork-barrel spending or to pay down the national debt—it's all theft.
..........It is absolutely ludicrous that the federal government steals our excess entitlement payments, calls them a surplus, spends them wherever it pleases, and then deposits promissory notes that we must pay off in a system of double taxation following on the heels of grand theft.
..........Do you really believe that someone the stature of Allan Sloan doesn't know this? Or that he can't put it in simple words everyone can understand? I doubt it.
..........In the same article, Mr. Sloan goes on to confirm some of the other things I've been telling you for years. Particularly, that federal trust funds are not anything like trust funds in the private sector. And that they never hold any real money, just promissory notes of indebtedness.
..........This last part makes me very happy and to wonder if the fine minds and good hearts of this nation are finally beginning to understand the rip-off. Could it be that they are getting their heads out of the actuarial data of the insurance business and starting to look at Social Security's problem where it counts. For a moment, I don't feel quite so alone anymore.
..........Or is it that Mr. Sloan is merely pushing the envelope of what his superiors will allow him to write about? After all, he's a big gun with Newsweek. A company that is owned by NBC that, in turn, is owned by General Electric. One of the largest lobbyists and defense manufacturers in the country. Benefactors of the government's star wars projects, a defense budget that hasn't changed since our enemies gave up, a major player in war games and one of the greatest tools of propaganda ever invented by "bringing better things to life" through its NBC/Time-Warner/CNN affiliation. Can you believe it, I used to work for these guys.
..........Hey, part of the truth is better than nothing.