There Is No Social Security Trust Fund:
The Joke's On YouAlthough this article is a bit dated, Dr. Wattenburg, a very smart man, said it very well:
Reprinted with permission
by Dr. Bill WattenburgAny politician who says there is a Social Security Trust fund that can pay benefits in the future is a vicious liar. There is no trust fund that can go bankrupt if a little is saved for you. The finger wagging politicians today, who tell you everything is ok, are the hemorrhoids of the savings and loan scam artists of twenty years ago. Look in the mirror and guess who is going to be paying everybody else s retirement benefits a short fifteen years from now. By the way, the Washington politicians who feed you this crap don t pay social security. They have their own federal retirement system that pays them ten times as much from your taxes.
Here is what a recent Washington Post report had to say:
Often ignored in the debate is the inevitable effect that the huge increase in payouts to retiring Boomers will have on the federal budget. That s because, in some ways, the Social Security Trust Fund is a fiction.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/special/security/security.htmStudents and young workers:
The Washington Post once printed the definition for a new phrase called the Dopeler Effect (after the Doppler effect in physics). Dopeler Effect: the tendency of stupid ideas to seem reasonable when they come at your rapidly. You have all suffered a fuzzy professor who forces you to memorize political buzzwords to pass his course. Likewise, the Washington dopeler meisters have been telling you that the non-existent social security trust fund will be bankrupted if even a small amount of your taxes are invested in a real bank account for your retirement.
You can easily verify what I say here in a few minutes on the internet. Check the references. What you have is another massive debt coming your way that is bigger than your student loans and anything you will be able to save for a home in the next ten years. You have a chance to stop it, but only if you get out and vote for those who will stop the fraud. You can download a copy of this report from the website pushback.com or from my webpage at: www.kgoam810.com. Email it to your unsuspecting friends PDQ, today.
The Congressional Research Service (CRS) of the Library of Congress issues factual public reports on the social security situation. The CRS says bluntly: There is no social security trust fund with real money or assets in it. Most people, and most of the media, don t realize that social security taxes taken from people s paychecks are not paid into a social security bank account. They are paid directly into the federal government s general account. The politicians in Washington have stolen and spent over a trillion dollars of excess social security taxes that were not paid out in benefits to retirees.
For instance, in this year 2000 the government will take in social security taxes of 479 billion dollars taken directly from the paychecks of 95% of the working public. Benefits paid out to retirees will be 409 billion dollars. The Treasury Department will give the Social Security Administration paper IOUs for the 70 billion of excess social security taxes that were supposed to be saved for future retirement benefits. Worse yet, the Treasury will not subtract this 70 billion debt from the federal income surplus that is claimed. Because your social security money was stolen, there was no real federal surplus the last two years.
To cover this smoke and mirrors fraud and keep you unsuspecting suckers quiet, the politicians in Washington even designed the paper IOUs (by law) so that they can never be sold to anyone (banks) for real money. They are not negotiable. This means that the Social Security Trustees can never use the IOUs to pay future social security benefits. These IOUs are not real treasury bills that have value. They are not assets. They are totally worthless that is unless you pay double taxes in the future to pay them off.
Now, the professional fear mongers are scaring the old folks and young workers alike with claims that the non-existent trust fund will go bankrupt if even 10% of the billions of social security taxes you are paying are saved for you in a real bank account. It is stupid not to do this when 100% of the excess will be wasted by the politicians in Washington otherwise as it has been for the last sixty years.
Here is a story that is a good analogy to what is happening to you. Give this to your politically dumbed-down friends who deny the facts. Suppose you want to support your parents who are retired and you also want to save some for your retirement. So you give a banker $10,000 a year for the parents and an extra $5000 a year to save for you. The banker pays the parents, but he takes your $5000 for himself each year. To keep you happy over the years, he gives you a savings book that shows your balance with 2% interest added each year (the IOUs). But when you ask for your money upon retirement, he simply says that there is no money in the bank. He can only pay you if some other unsuspecting sucker will deposit his future retirement money in the bank. In the current social security fraud, you are the suckers today. Your children are the future suckers. Neither of you deserve this.
Where do you think the trust fund would be today if even 20% of excess social security taxes had been invested in the stock market (America) eight years ago? You would already have enough saved in your name to buy that home.
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Bill Wattenburg is a Research Scientist with The Research Foundation, California State University Chico (Chico, CA 95929). His scientific accomplishments are documented on a website, drbill.org.
He grew up in the Sierra and worked as a logger and firefighter before being appointed to the faculty of the University of California at Berkeley and working in the Physics Division at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in nuclear weapons design. He still fights wildfires every summer as a bulldozer operator for the U.S. Forest Service.
Copyright © 2000 Dr. Bill Wattenburg
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Of course, who could have imagined the corruption going on with companies like Enron and the gold manipulation by the big bankers on Wall Street when Dr. Wattenburg wrote this fine piece? As always, I highly recommend you diversify some of your assets into gold because it's the only real money on earth: