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Bob, I really wanted to give you a chance. You were better informed than most. But, you disappointed me.

Again Iâ€™ll ask- whereâ€™s the proof the government only spent the money on what they were supposed to?

No, the burden is on you. You are making the claim of misappropriation of funds. Let's see it. I'm not interested in someone else's opinion: I want to see the hard proof in official government documents.

You can look up the Social Security Trustee reports all the way back to 1941:

https://www.ssa.gov/history/reports/trust/trustreports.html

It's all accounted there. If you find an error, I'd love to hear about it.

But, instead you have diverted into tin-foil hat territory, and thrown up irrelevant information in an attempt to confuse the issue and avoid the truth. And now, you are outright lying to people that don't know any better.

I understand your concern about how the Trust Fund is accounted in the deficit and aational debt. You aren't the first person to notice that it's not. For that matter, neither is the Civil Service Trust fund, or any number of others. You can search for "US government unfunded liability" and learn a great deal.

However, as long as the federal government pays back the surplus payroll tax deposited in the Social Security Trust Fund, plus a market dividend rate, they will meet their obligations. They started doing so in 2010, and if nothing is changed, it will be completed in about 19 years. At that point, it WILL be part of the national debt, having been converted into US Treasury Bonds held by investors and banks.

But, while we can honestly disagree about how the Trust Fund should have been invested, or whether it should be included in the national debt (actually, I don't think we would), what I'm really trying to explain to you and everyone else:

There has been no "theft". There's no missing money out there to be "put back". You and so many other people insist on focusing on that, because they don't want to admit where the "missing" money really went: to their parents, grandparents, and themselves.

[Note: in the next paragraph, I use "we" in the collective, not individual. You or anyone else reading this may have personally opposed it. But individually, we are, or will be, reaping the benefits]

Yes, Congress mismanaged Social Security. But, they did it because we wanted them to do so. When they voted to raise benefits drastically and add a COLA, we cheered them on without regard for the consequences. And we voted against anyone that suggested it might be unsustainable.

The Reagan administration tried to fix it in the 80's. But, the assumptions were far too optimistic. Long ago, I had an article that pointed out how optimistic they were, in comparison to history. But, no one wanted to talk about it and since then, we've been steadily losing ground.

Since then, the real "mismanagement" has been the refusal of Congress to address the problem. Again, that's our fault for not holding their feet to the fire and/or threatening the ones that dared suggest doing so.

And that's why I'm so disappointed in you and everyone else that flames me for telling the truth. There's no secret accounting that ruined Social Security. There's no shadowy group of people that "got more than they deserved". It's all out there in the open, if you just paid attention.

The problem with Social Security is that every Social Security recipient in the past 40 years and in the future (if no changes are made) has been or is getting more than Social Security can afford.

And I believe that's the reason I see so much resistance from you and so many others: they don't want to admit the responsibility is (collectively) theirs, and that ultimately they must make personal sacrifices to fix the problem.

The only alternative is to put an ever-increasing burden on your children. Maybe that's OK with you, but it's not OK with me.