That national debt clock is wrong. Our national debt is now $21.4 trillion dollars.......and counting.
As I was researching information for my earlier post I came across a fact that I had never really considered. For years I have lamented that China holds so much of our debt, as does Japan, as does South Korea, as does other foreign powers who hold a total of $6 trillion of our debt, China and Japan our biggest clients with 20 percent each of debt owned by foreigners.
However, imagine my surprise to find that another group of Americans are holding more of of our national debt than all of the other foreign countries combined. It seems that our Social Security recipients are owed $6.6 trillion of that debt. Yep, the oldsters like me who have found pension raises hard to come by in the last decade, after paying in to the program for more than half a century.
Despite the long term worries over the viability of Social Security, the Social Security Trust Fund has been taking in more revenue than paid out for decades. Where once that trust fund was sacred, not to be touched by politicians, the Democratic Congress, in 1965, led willingly down the periled path by President Lyndon Johnson, opted to start confiscating our Social Security Trust Fund dollars and sticking them in the General Fund, that giant monetary piñata that politicians use to buy votes with government gravy.
If the Social Security Trust Fund had never been touched there would never have been any danger of it every going broke. Alas, the government looted that fund in two ways. First, they kept the lid on cost of living increases, allowing inflation to slowly eat away at a pensioner's buying power, which allowed Uncle Sam to issue I.O.U.s to be paid back with falsely inflated dollars. Secondly, they simply recorded that Social Security tax revenue as an accounting entry, then shuffled our retirement dollars into the general fund, to pay for any number of frivolous programs...from studying the sex life of the common housefly, to paying out $15 billion dollars annually in Child Tax Credits to illegal aliens.
So, stand proud seniors! Stand proud young folks who hope Social Security will be there for you when you are ready to retire! Consider this, all; When you combine the $6 trillion plus America owes its foreign bankers, with the nearly $7 trillion it owes everyone who pays into social security, you have nearly $14 trillion of that $21.4 trillion in debt all accounted for! The big banks, the Social Media moguls who own Amazon and Facebook, the big corporations, even Warrant Buffett, all own less of our government debt than the collective citizenry of retired pensioners and hard working blue collar stiffs!
And while American cannot realistically screw their foreign bankers, you can be absolutely sure they'll employ cost of living tricks and phony audit entries to make sure they never have to pay us back.
Any questions, class?
3 comments:
And those SS benefits are taxed, further decreasing their value. I hope you saved and invested. I'm 57, and have planned for my financial future with the asumption SS would not be available to me, saving and investing since I was a 2nd Lt. in 1982.
I'm doing okay but recently read that something like 67 percent of Americans have nothing and will rely on SS to support them in old age. Yikes!
That's my generation, too busy buying things they don't need to impress people they don't know. The political pressure will be immense to keep that $ flowing. That means tax increases.
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