How Can You Tell When an Imaginary Trust Fund Disappears?
26th March 2010
Well, the people who knew it all along say, ‘Told you so.’
The government already has spent all of this money (and then some). All that is left in the “trust fund” is IOUs from one part of the government to another. And guess who has to make good on those IOUs? While there is budgetary significance to this accounting fiction (since Social Security cannot legally continue paying benefits after its notional reserve is officially exhausted), all this talk of a trust fund tends to obscure reality.
Ever notice how the government commonly does things that, were they done by any other entity, would have people going to jail?