For more than two decades, Social Security collected more money in payroll taxes than it paid out in benefits — billions more each year.
Not anymore. This year, for the first time since the 1980s, when Congress last overhauled Social Security, the retirement program is projected to pay out more in benefits than it collects in taxes — nearly $29 billion more.
Sounds like a good time to start tapping the nest egg. Too bad the federal government already spent that money over the years on other programs, preferring to borrow from Social Security rather than foreign creditors. In return, the Treasury Department issued a stack of IOUs — in the form of Treasury bonds — which are kept in a nondescript office building just down the street from Parkersburg’s municipal offices.
Now the government will have to borrow even more money, much of it abroad, to start paying back the IOUs, and the timing couldn’t be worse. The government is projected to post a record $1.5 trillion budget deficit this year, followed by trillion dollar deficits for years to come.
If you thought inflation was bad before, with government print up trillion dollar checks for all the banks, unions, politically connected corporations, and anyone who could claim to be creating or saving a job, just wait until we start printing up billions of non-existent dollars for retirees everywhere!
Your $1,200 check will be worth so little, Congress will have to get crazy creative with eliminating price points from cost of living calculations in order to keep your benefits down!
The government needs to return to a sound, Constitutional money. The government needs to get out of the nanny business. With an un-inflatable money supply based on gold or silver your nest egg will appreciate in value, whether or not it’s earning interest, unlike our current paper money which is constantly being devalued by the ever increasing supply of Federal Reserve Notes.
Note in closing: just two years ago, it was projected that this moment, when revenues would fall below program costs, would arrive in 2018, and the projected point at which the fund would be exhausted entirely would arrive in 2040.
So the first crisis is hitting 8 years early in the middle of our biggest recession ever. Undoubtedly, the next will hit considerably sooner than expected, and it will not be fun.
We need to free the private sector from government’s yoke so that the country can return to prosperity, before it’s too late!
via Social Security to start cashing Uncle Sam’s IOUs – Yahoo! News.
