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That’s exactly what it is. An accounting fiction. Same thing with the supposed “Fed balance sheet.”
by bradleyjg 3y ago
That’s exactly what it is. An accounting fiction. Same thing with the supposed “Fed balance sheet.”
- taeric 3y agoI'm curious if you could expand on what you mean about it being an accounting fiction. I've never seen anything that didn't show it would be fine without funds getting siphoned out of it.
- bradleyjg 3y agoI mean it doesn’t have an independent legal existence. You pay social security taxes to the federal government and the government pays out social security checks. It’s only political rhetoric that connects the two. At any time congress can alter anything about the system. If your social security tax payments created a legally vested property right in some account, protected by the due process clause, then it would be a different situation—-not an accounting fiction.
- taeric 3y agoSince it is the government, anything at that level would still be at the whims of, the government. Such that I don't really see your point? Are you wanting it to be argued that they'd have to pass a resolution to change whether or not they can use the funds? Isn't that basically what already happened? You could argue that it could have been done in a different way, but the odds are silly high that that wouldn't have changed anything. Budgetary spend and allocation is controlled by congress, such that it would have only changed the nature of the resolution. More, you would just be changing the nature of the "fiction." Akin to saying the federal reserve is separate from the government. I mean, yeah, but it is also established by the government. And I expect that winds of the controlling party would blow it about as well as it does the EPA and such.