[american spirit]

I know, I know....the fellows' name is Scott Burns and even though he's probably has to follow the company line he does tend to expose issues and facts about the fedgovs accounting gimmicks,etc. He wrote a column on 2-16 about what I described and he re-produced figures from the fegov's financial report for 2001 as the basis of his story. I'm also familiar with the fact that the fedgov understates the true value of it's assets so perhaps his findings are somewhat skewed but the fact remains that Social Security and Medicare are woefully undefunded and someday we'll have to pay the piper. For more info do a keyword on "Dallas News ScottBurns 2003 columns".

[justshutupandtakeit]

Most of the crap about the debt is nonsense. How can you evaluate the value of most of the government holdings? How much is the Grand Canyon worth?

Deficits are totally misconscrued since the value of the things purchased is never considered. Spending 10 billion on social security payments looks the same as spending 10 billion on a 1000 buildings.

Social security was never properly funded because the politicos keep adding beneficiaries without changing the funding mechanism.