Keep your eye on the prize....

Many people on Wall Street want our Social Security taxes spent on Wall Street schemes and scams. If they can get it then they will have billions more to play with.

Do we not remember what they did with all that money from 401k's and government housing money?

Well?

They killed the fucking economy!

It's not often I side with the left but taking our money that we pay into the government for 40 years is war. Or do you think they will do better next time and we can trust them.

Social Security Bait And Switch, A Continuing Series - NYTimes.com

I’ve written about this repeatedly in the past, but here it is again: Social Security is a program that is part of the federal budget, but is by law supported by a dedicated source of revenue. This means that there are two ways to look at the program’s finances: in legal terms, or as part of the broader budget picture.

In legal terms, the program is funded not just by today’s payroll taxes, but by accumulated past surpluses — the trust fund. If there’s a year when payroll receipts fall short of benefits, but there are still trillions of dollars in the trust fund, what happens is, precisely, nothing — the program has the funds it needs to operate, without need for any Congressional action.

Alternatively, you can think about Social Security as just part of the federal budget. But in that case, it’s just part of the federal budget; it doesn’t have either surpluses or deficits, no more than the defense budget.

Both views are valid, depending on what questions you’re trying to answer.

What you can’t do is insist that the trust fund is meaningless, because SS is just part of the budget, then claim that some crisis arises when receipts fall short of payments, because SS is a standalone program. Yet that’s exactly what the WaPo claims.

This is what you call negative journalistic value added.