Talk:Social Security Trust Fund
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[edit] purpose of wikipedia articles
The purpose of articles in wikipedia is to provide reliable information to anyone with a question. It is not for news stories. Therefore, the paragraph that begins, "this week, the president..." For that to be appropriate for an article here, the president would be repeating the same speech each and every week.
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This is not the forum for advancing points of view. Just the facts, please. Mulp 06:33, 12 January 2007 (UTC)
[edit] stuff
This statement is incorrect. First of all government securities are marketable assets, and second it is perfectly legal for a company to invest its pension funds in government securities.
- Unlike private pension funds, the Social Security Trust Fund does not hold any marketable assets to secure workers' paid-in contributions. The Social Security Trust Fund "invests" surpluses in United States Treasury bonds and U.S. securities backed "by the full faith and credit of the government".
:Practically speaking, the federal government has used the Social Security Trust Fund in a way which would be illegal for any private-sector company to do - in order to help balance the federal budget, the government has borrowed money from the Trust Fund to pay current operating expenses and replaced those funds with government IOU's --- This "correction" is incorrect. It would not be "perfectly legal" for a company to "invest" its pension funds in its own securities - whether they were marketable or not. Corporate execs go to jail for that sort of chicanery.
"All securities held by the trust funds are backed by the full faith and credit of the United States Government, as required by law. Those currently held by the OASI Trust Fund are special issues (i.e., securities sold only to the trust funds)" http://www.ssa.gov/OACT/TR/TR03/III_cyoper.html You can not buy or sell these special issues on the market. The insert in the main article from the 2000 budget is absolutely correct. Once the social security taxes fall below the retirement insurance requirements (2015?), other taxes or government debt or reduced federal spending in other areas will be required to meet the entitlements of the social security recipients. There is no money as we understand it in any US Government trust fund. Lamar White lamarw@easystreet.com
Most U.S. government bonds are marketable, but the ones held in the Social Security Trust fund are not. The two statements above are correct. I do have a problem with the bolded portion though and feel the whole second paragraph should be deleted outright. I'd make the changes myself but I'd probably come under attack from some wacko who sees this as an attack on his political ideology, ingores the facts, and revert my good-faith edit. Wiki was great starting out but too many overzealous conservatives and liberals alike will modify or revert articles on political issues in order to fit their own agenda.
- While I appreciate the emotion that many feel on this topic, wikipedia is not a debating forum where opposing views are argued, nor a forum for publishing original research or analysis. While points of view can be presented, these must be those of others, with appropriate citations, and with opposing positions of similar stature given equal credence. (Btw, I have been considering many of the claims made, and I believe that the assumptions, and solutions proposed are deeply flawed, merely moving problem from one place to another without eliminating it and without fixing the problem identified. However, much as I would like, this is not the forum to present my analysis.) Mulp 06:20, 12 January 2007 (UTC)
[edit] category
I was intending to categorize this article, but can't figure out the appropriate category? Should it be USA government, Economics ??? Would be good if someone stamp some category down there. gathima 16:01, 18 Jun 2005 (UTC)
[edit] Trust Fund???
There is NO Social Security Trust Fund. Any politician who says otherwise is lying. Gore actually had a good idea about that "lockbox." Username:BRivera
[edit] Need reliable sources in order to include "Is the Trust Fund Real? (economic perspective)"
The "Is the Trust Fund Real" (economic perspective) lacked any sources whatsoever. As Wikipedia's Verifiability policy explicitly states:
The threshold for inclusion in Wikipedia is verifiability, not truth. "Verifiable" in this context means that any reader should be able to check that material added to Wikipedia has already been published by a reliable source. Editors should provide a reliable source for material that is challenged or likely to be challenged, or it may be removed.
If the analysis that section offered was accurate, then finding many reliable sources from the field of economics to document it should be easy. If the analysis was, instead, the conclusion of its contributors, then it was original research and should remain deleted.
- Kelly Ramsey 21:10, 9 February 2007 (UTC)
- This is pretty basic economics, and I didn't think it was likely to be challenged. If you review the cited paper, it supports and is entirely consistent with what I wrote. (If you're not at a University, I think you're going to have to get some friend who is to download the paper for you.) From the paper, "Despite this success in building up the assets of the trust funds, it is not at all obvious that the intended intergenerational burden sharing will take place. In order for the trust funds to actually assist future generations of workers, they must increase national saving, presumably by raising government saving." The paper then proceeds to show that government spending rose in response to trust fund revenues combined with the Unified Budget and therefore national savings was not increased. -- Mgunn 21:50, 9 February 2007 (UTC)
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- Being an economist, you think the only reason for the trust fund argument is whether there are any savings effects,... if you were a lawyer you would realize that the SSA needs authority to pay benefits when receipts fall short causing the giovt top borrrow. The xiatnmice of a positive bvalcnce allows such borrowings. When he Truist Fubnd runs out, the authority ends Chivista 21:54, 9 February 2007 (UTC)
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- That's why the section has (economic perspective) in the title. I agree that legally, the Social Security trust fund is very real. The economic question is whether baby boomers have been saving for their own retirement (through the trust fund). This is the subject of debate in the economics profession, but a significant body of evidence points to increased government spending and/or income tax cuts because of the trust fund, and therefore the money wasn't saved. -- Mgunn 22:04, 9 February 2007 (UTC)
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