Yes, but I also said….
Don’t get hung up on the friend situation, either, I could just as well have sold a house and been waiting to purchase another one.
I thought about going back and replacing my anecdote about a friend asking me to hold his money with something less distracting…but ended up settling for the little blurb I quote above. Unfortunately, the friend part is the only part of my post that Donovan seems to have noticed.
Donovan jumps on my "friend" anecdote because it allows him to focus on the "form" over the "substance". It sounds like he’s refuting my point, but in fact, he ignores it. Addressing it properly would have involved consideration of the situation where I sell a house and have to hold the money for a while.
In accounting, the concept of "substance over form" is an important one; it’s a primary one. In this argument, what you do with the money specifically is the "form". What your obligations are with respect to that money is the substance. Donovan confuses an entity putting money that it is holding (with a fiduciary responsibility) to the best use it can find, with the money somehow being separated from the fiduciary responsibility.
But we’re talking about an administrative function here. Temporarily using the money being held in social security for other uses is exactly analogous to overnighting the money in your business accounts overseas to earn interest. You are merely putting the money to the best available use. This is sound financial management. This doesn’t change your responsibilities at all and I don’t see how one could argue differently.
To continue the analogy, in the present case what we have is that the stewards of all moneys have been reckless and derelict. I agree that they are trying to execute a transfer of value to the rich…if that’s what you mean. But what the hell does that have to do with Social Security?
Suppose I run up huge medical bills and have no money other than that set aside for my child’s college tuition. What I would do (and you could choose to do something different, so spare me the lecture) is raid the college fund to pay the bills so I don’t go bankrupt and lose the college fund anyway (spare me any legalese about college funds in bankruptcy court, etc…. you hereby agree that such a vein would be irrelevant and ridiculous to pursue).
I then would pay back the money to the college fund as time went by and I could afford to do so. If I had promised this to my kid or had some legal arrangment that required me to provide the fund, the analogy would be better. If I had run up huge credit card bills financing a war on foreign soil and letting my wife not have to work and stay home all day eating Bon Bons… the analogy would be better.
But all we’re talking about is how I manage my money. All talk of income taxes is irrelevant to the obligations of the United States to honor its fiduciary responsibilities with respect to Social Security. What it does with the money in the interim shouldn’t matter. Again, the focus here ought to be on the stewards of the money. They’re the ones in the business of managing the moneys to make sure the obligations are met. Regardless of how much anyone argues the point, the reality is that over the years over 8 trillion has been paid in and over 7 trillion has been paid out.
Bush has managed to distract the people from the fact that he’s trying to steal their money. He’s doing in fact what I said I would do to my friend in jest… he’s saying, "we don’t owe you any money… what are you talking about? There’s no money…."
HE’S TRYING TO STEAL THE MONEY, PEOPLE!
Can’t you stop focusing on trying to handcuff the money managers in their money management responsibilities and focus instead on handcuffing them for their fraudulent activies with respect to the funding of the government? The income tax giveaway should be retroactively repealed… but this has NOTHING to do with Social Security.
whereIstand Tags
