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… is from pages 42-43 of Thomas Sowell’s October 2001 column titled “Social Security ‘Trust Fund’ [2],” as this column is reprinted (with slight modification, and under the title “Social Security vs. Privatization”) in Sowell’s 2002 collection, Controversial Essays [3]:
When your Social Security taxes get to Washington, they are spent – right then and there. What preserves the illusion of a “trust fund” is that the Social Security system is given government bonds in exchange for the money that Congress takes and spends. But, no matter what kind of accounting sleight-of-hand you use, you cannot spend and save the same money.
Those bonds in the Social Security “trust fund” represent no tangible assets – not houses, not factories, not cars, not trains. They are promises that can be kept only by taxing future taxpayers.
DBx: Indeed.
It’s astonishing how many seemingly intelligent people have been duped over the years into believing that Social Security’s so-called “trust fund” is something more than a mere gimmick meant to fool the public. And it’s at least equally astonishing that so many people continue to look to the perpetuator of this gimmick, the state, as a trustworthy source of protection from fraud, deceit, and financial improprieties.