> The money held by your bank for you ...
Indeed. And your point is?
As the old saying goes, if you owe someone money and can't pay, you have a problem. If you owe someone a *lot* of money and can't pay, then *they* have a problem.
The so-called "trust fund" is getting close to one full year of revenues. I trust Yahoo to get earnings right now more than I trust that "trust fund" will ever be able to be "paid back" ...
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Sorry to be so coy with the postings on this issue; we simply disagree about whether or not it's valid to even think of those accounts as anything connected to reality.
The issue that started this was someone commenting on how it might be bad to put the value of the trust fund into the stock market: something that is as likely to happen as for Citibank to capitalize 100% of their asset base. As I said, current obligations are paid from current revenues, so there is no 'float' for the system to require investment of. The fact that they over charged workers at a highly regressive rate doesn't figure in to this at all. The vast 'windfall' to Wall $treet would be in the form of newly created (or added to) accounts that would augment or replace the current system, not some fresh stack of money under someone's mattress somewhere.
And I guess I also learned that Max and I disagree on whether or not workers should view FICA contributions as "their" money.
Maybe I'm just too young for that.
/jordan