'Why the Social Security Trust Fund is Real'

pgl at Econospeak:

Kevin Drum on Why the Social Security Trust Fund is Real, by pgl:

Kevin Drum has a short and sweet analogy for the position that the assets in
the Social Security Trust Fund are real:

Now, suppose this surplus had been invested in corporate bonds. What exactly
would that mean? It means that workers would be giving money to corporations,
who would turn around and spend it. In return, the Social Security trust fund
would receive bonds that represent promises to repay the money later out of the
company’s cash flow. In effect, it gives workers a claim on the cash flows of
the company at a later date in time. When that time comes, the company would
have to pay up, which would make it less profitable. If the company was already
unprofitable, it would make their deficit even worse. If that’s what had
happened, there would be no confusion about the trust fund. Everyone agrees that
corporate bonds are real things, and that the corporations who sell them have an
obligation to pay them back, even though it means less money for shareholder
dividends.

He then substitutes treasury bonds for corporate bonds and draws the same
conclusion. QED! While I agree, let me try to offer the rightwing rebuttal,
which begins with the proposition that the general fund is essentially bankrupt.
Is it and why? Well – it is true that the Reagan years cut taxes on the very
rich just as it raised payroll taxes. It is also true that President Reagan
increased defense spending. Although we had the peace dividend and some
reversals of those tax cuts during the 1990’s, George W. Bush put us back on the
path of high defense spending and low taxes on the rich in 2001. The Republican
Party seems to believe that we must forever have high defense spending and low
taxes on the rich. Well if that is true, it is analogous to paying high
dividends to corporate shareholders even as corporate profits are well below the
dividend policy. But do we really have to accept this Republican belief system?
No we can honor these promises to pay Social Security benefits if we as a nation
are willing to tell the rich to pay higher taxes and tell the military
industrial complex that it gets less largesse. But I guess some Republicans see
the promises of low tax rates for the rich and continuing largesse for the
military industrial complex as sacrosanct, which of course leads them to
conclude that the problem is those promises to Social Security beneficiaries.

The tax cuts can also be viewed as a loan from the Social Security Trust Fund that didn’t pay off as promised.