Posted on 10/29/2025 11:07:04 AM PDT by reaganator
First off, I want to be told how I am wrong. For many decades, when there was a surplus to the Social Security contributions this money was moved to the general fund and spent. In place of this spent money are $2.7 trillion of U.S. Treasury Notes in the Social Security Trust Fund Reserve. To redeem these treasury notes that merely represent the spent surplus Social Security contributions new money must be collect from taxpayers or federal deficit spending exercised. The $2.7 trillion of U.S. Treasury Notes cannot be used to demonstrate the solvency of Social Security which is often done.
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PRETTY MUCH WHAT HAPPENED
I want what’s coming to me. With interest.
It’s a Ponzi scheme, and always has been. If it had been created by anyone other than the Federal government, the people responsible would have ended up facing long prison terms. Like all Ponzi schemes, Social Security *must* eventually fail, because you can’t keep expanding the base of the pyramid forever.
SS has been running a deficit lately. 2024 -$67B gonna eat into the “surplus” quickly.
Those U S Treasury notes that were put in the till when the money was drawn out are merely IOUs. No money in them, only accounting entries. The money was spent.
SS has been running a deficit lately. 2024 -$67B gonna eat into the “surplus” quickly.
Social security is nothing more than a collectivist death tax Ponzi scheme designed to rob you of everything.
I wish they had the option of managing your own SS like Bush suggested. I would be a multi-millionaire by now. As it is, I could actually do without it. However, the piddly amount that it is belongs to me, and I want all that’s coming to me. And, my wife wants the thousands of dollars they still owe her because of the windfall elimination provision. That minuscule payback they gave her this year is an insult.
But, but we were promised back in 1964...
https://www.ssa.gov/history/ssa/usa1964-2.html
Self-Supporting
“The program is designed so that contributions plus interest on the investments of the social security trust funds will be sufficient to meet all of the costs of benefits and administration, now and into the indefinite future—without any subsidy from the general funds of the Government. Both the Congress and the Executive Branch, regardless of political party in power, have scrupulously provided in advance for full financing of all liberalizations in the program.”
And where the money went...Read and Weep!
https://www.ssa.gov/OACT/ProgData/fundFAQ.html#n4
Flemming vs. Nestor says you’ve got *nothing* coming to you.
https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/363/603/
It’s just a tax, that’s all.
That’s all it’s ever been.
If you get paid even $0.01, one time, that’s a privilege, not a right.
So says SCOTUS; and it was decided 65 years ago in 1960; so this is not new.
Now; the *political fallout* of paying the people who haven’t lived here and don’t work (illegal aliens and SNAP recipients) and *stiffing* the people with their 35 highest earnings years who did live here and did work....well, that’s something else entirely.
Are you surprised that a Democrat (FDR) scammed you?
All the social security contributions went to pay for the social security of illegal aliens. /spit
This happened towards the end of the Vietnam era.
Better late than never.
I found the Social Security Trust Fund:
If we do a heist and steal the file cabinet we own it all.
Lol.
Social Security Full Retirement Age was 65 in 1935 when average life expectancy for men was 61 and women 64. It wasn’t something people were expected to collect for several decades. “Retirement” wasn’t really a thing back then for most working class people.
If we adjusted Full Retirement Age to track with today’s longevity vs 1935, it would be somewhere around 82. Without adjustments, either in payout, retirement age or both, it’s unsustainable. Unfortunately, no one wants to hire old folks.
that was due to high child mortality which wouldn’t effect ss payments.
For those who reached age 65: A person reaching 65 in 1935 could expect to live an additional 12 to 14 years, reaching an average age of about 77 to 79.
Retirement wasn’t a thing, but pensions were. Of course, that was way back when companies valued loyalty and experience, and didn’t outsource jobs overseas or keep experienced employees on just long enough to train their H1B replacements.
> Unfortunately, no one wants to hire old folks.
Don’t need to tell me about that one.
Yes and no.
Yes: That's how the SS trust fund money was spent. By law, the only thing the SS money can be invested in are U.S. Treasuries. So Congress didn't technically raid the SS fund and spent it (answering FReeper reganator's original quesiton). What happened is Congress ran up debt knowing that someone would be buying a bunch of U.S. treasuries (the SS fund). Until recently, for many decades the SS fund was the largest owner of U.S. debt, until the Federal Reserve increased its balance sheet and bought a bunch of treasures (through QE or Quantitative Easing). But I think the SS fund is now back to being the largest U.S. debt holder (after the Fed lowered its balance sheet with QT Quantitative Tapering).
Here's why I answer partly in No.
No: It's a stretch to say that treasury notes are just accounting entries with no money. Mine and my wife's retirement investments (mostly in our Roth IRAs) are spread out across 40+ mutual funds of different asset classes, 1/4th of which are bond/treasury/money market type (to handle market downturns). The two treasury funds (one long-term, one intermediate) both grow more than they shrink and I make some money in them. Bonus points that they tend to grow a lot when the stock market crashes. Are treasuries worth making the core of one's investments (of course not). And they certainly don't grow enough to prop up the Ponzi scheme called Social Security, especially with the left's push half a century ago to lower birth rates to save us from over population .... after they set up a Ponzi scheme that depended on sky high fertility rates to bring new "investors" into SS.
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