Sure, I got that much.
“In any case, one branch of the gov can't lend to another in any meaningful way.”
Well—why not? Borrowing from the Soc Security TF may be a stupid idea from a financial policy standpoint, but I don’t see any reason in principle why the Social Security Trust Fund can’t be—well, a trust fund. The effect of contractual and other legal obligations, agreed-upon budgets, internal accounting, and accepted administrative procedures may not be “meaningful” in some very gross calculus of total revenue (and I’m not sure what remains meaningful, if one’s base of analysis is hypothetically stripped of those social relations), but on the level of analysis here—why not?
“The SS Trust Funds assets are pure money of the mind.”
What other kind of money is there? “Real” glittery pieces of gold?
The Social Security Trust Fund requires agreed-upon political, social, and (presumably) enforceable legal relations, and it means nothing without those—but that is definitional, I thought. It’s not just the SSTF. How else is money supposed to work?
Look, if the truth is, “The Social Security ‘trust fund’ is bullshit, there's no 'trust fund,' we say that for the rubes and geezers, that supposedly separate ‘Social Security’ payment you’ve been making for years is just part of general funds, but we’ll put in a meaningless IOU torn off the corner of a napkin if it makes you feel more secure, sweetheart,”—OK, if that’s the truth, then better to know the truth. But I fail to see any abstract, complex “economic” (or, to turn the scare quotes around, “non-political”) explanation here. It’s just lying and misappropriation.
On Tue, Jun 22, 2010 at 5:11 PM, Doug Henwood <dhenwood at panix.com> wrote:
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> On Jun 22, 2010, at 10:38 PM, socialismorbarbarism wrote:
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