When you go to USAFACTS, you expect …uh…facts. So, it’s a bit off-putting when you get factual but misleading data and even more misleading explanations.
Here’s an example
What 2034 means for Social Security – rodger921p@gmail.com – Gmail
Is Social Security running out?
Social Security trust funds have run at a deficit every year since 2021, a reversal after decades of surpluses.
As regular readers of this blog know:
A federal trust fund is an accounting mechanism used by the federal government to track earmarked receipts (money designated for a specific purpose or program) and corresponding expenditures.
The largest and best-known trust funds finance Social Security, portions of Medicare, highways and mass transit, and pensions for government employees.
Federal trust funds bear little resemblance to their private-sector counterparts, and therefore the name can be misleading.
A “trust fund” implies a secure source of funding. However, a federal trust fund is simply an accounting mechanism used to track inflows and outflows for specific programs.
In private-sector trust funds, receipts are deposited and assets are held and invested by trustees on behalf of the stated beneficiaries.
In federal trust funds, the federal government does not set aside the receipts or invest them in private assets.
Rather, the receipts are recorded as accounting credits in the trust funds, and then combined with other receipts that the Treasury collects and spends.
Further, the federal government owns the accounts and can, by changing the law, unilaterally alter the purposes of the accounts and raise or lower collections and expenditures. ( Peter G. Peterson Foundation web site)
Not only are they not “trust funds” but they are not the source of funding for Social Security or any other federal program. Instead, the government presses whatever computer keys it pleases (according to the rules —laws–it has set for itself) and certain numbers appear wherever the government wants them to appear.
It’s almost comically arbitrary. Say we, the federal government, want $900 in this ABC account. By the laws we have passed, we’ll push the 9,0,0 keys and make the balance of the ABC account grow by 900. It’s totally, 100% arbitrary, according to the federal government’s own rules. That’s called “Monetary Sovereignty.”
So, when you see or hear someone worry about the size of the federal deficit, debt, the debt/GDP ratio, or the balance in any government account, be aware that the government can change those numbers at will. No taxes necessary.
You might ask, “What becomes of the tax dollars I send to the federal government?”
To answer that question, you first must understand that money is not a physical thing. It is not the paper printed by the Treasury and carried in your wallet. It is not gold or silver or diamonds. Money is nothing more than numbers in accounts.
When you deposit money into your checking or savings account, no physical thing goes into a big box labeled “Mr. Smith’s money.” When you pay your taxes, the government doesn’t store something physical in a big safe.
All that happens when you send in your tax check, is that the numbers in your checking account go down and the numbers in a government account go up. So, you literally have not sent anything. Numbers changed. Period.
To pay for things, the federal government sends instructions –via wire or paper check–to a supplier’s bank, instructing the bank to increase the numbers in the supplier’s checking account. Then to balance its books, that bank informs the Federal Reserve, which instructs your bank to lower the numbers in your checking account.
Because the federal government invented the dollar, and makes all the rules regarding dollars, it has the unlimited ability to instruct banks to do anything with any accounts: Increase balances, reduce balances, anything.
If the federal government wished, it could instruct the General Fund (the government’s checking account) to increase its balance by $100,000 trillion, at which time, federal taxes no longer need be collected.
If it all sounds like hocus-pocus, think of the board game Monopoly. By rule, the Bank is not allowed to run short of Monopoly dollars. So, if that were to happen, the rules say to cut up some pieces of paper and use them. (I myself once played the game with no paper dollars. We just kept score on a sheet of paper with columns.)
If we wished, we could have started every player with $50, $500, $5,000 or anything else. Like the federal government, we were making the rules.
That is exactly how the federal government works. Being Monetarily Sovereign, it makes all the laws regarding money.
(State and local governments, businesses, you and I can’t do that. We don’t make the rules.)
Knowing the facts, think of how ridiculous the rest of the USAFACTS article is:
The Social Security Administration (SSA) projects that, absent congressional intervention, the combined trust fund reserves could be depleted by 2034.
At that point, revenue coming into the fund could cover about 83% of scheduled benefits.
The Old-Age and Survivors Insurance and Disability Insurance trust funds, which were worth a combined $2.56 trillion at the end of 2025, fund Social Security. Workers pay into Social Security trust funds through payroll taxes. Employers match these contributions.
Note the bolded words, “absent congressional intervention.” They mean that Congress and the President can change the numbers in any way they choose. The combined trust fund reserves could be doubled or tripled tomorrow, simply by Congress and the President voted for it.
Think of you standing in an elevator going down. Your problem is: if you do nothing, you’ll end up in the basement. So, you press the button labeled “3” and get off the elevator. Problem solved.
That is exactly the so-called “problem” stated by USAFACTS and many others. If Congress does nothing, the fake trust fund will run out of numbers. But, all Congress and the President need to do is press a button, add a few trillion to Social Security, and get off the elevator. No taxes needed. Just a vote.
Social Security covered 70.5 million people in December 2025, up 174% from 1970. The SSA paid retirees and dependents an average monthly benefit of $2,017 last December. Disabled workers and dependents received an average of $1,492. Survivors of deceased family members who had paid Social Security taxes received an average of $1,621.
The trust funds ran a surplus every year from 1982 to 2020. Since then, they’ve declined 11.9%, or $347.0 billion as benefit costs outgrew income money coming in. Last year, they took in $1.45 trillion and paid out $1.61 trillion.
The surplus was worse than meaningless. Not only did it do nothing to fund Social Security, but it took money from the economy and thus reduced Gross Domestic Producet. The surplus, far from being prudent, was recessive.
The federal government has the power to stop collecting the FICA tax and simultaneously triple all Social Security benefits, and pay them to everyone, even babies, and still never run short of dollars.
One reason for the potential depletion? Shifting age demographics. The Social Security system is designed, among other purposes, to support retirees.
The model needs a balance between workers contributing to the trust funds and beneficiaries receiving them. These days, more people are reaching retirement age and living longer in retirement, while relatively fewer people are entering the workforce.
You have been led to believe the “Big Lie in Economics,” that your taxes fund federal spending. In truth, your federal taxes fund nothing. (State and local taxes do fund state and local government spending).
Your state and local taxes serve two (and as you’ll see, really three) primary purposes:
- To help the federal government control the economy by taxing what the government wishes to discourage and by giving tax breaks to what the government wishes to reward.
- To assure demand for the U.S. dollar by requiring that taxes be paid in dollars.
And as for that third purpose, it goes like this:
The very rich run America. “Rich” is a comparative. The man who has $1,000 is rich if everyone else has only $1, but he is poor if everyone else has $10,000. So, getting richer, which the rich love doing, requires widening the income/wealth/power Gap between the rich and those below them.
There are two ways the rich widen the Gap: Get more for themselves and make sure those below them get less.
So, they bribe the information sources — the politicians, the economists and the media — to tell you that the government can’t afford such benefits as: Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, food stamps, school lunches –anything that will narrow the Gap.
They tell you that federal finances are like personal finances, and that like you, the government must “live within its means.” All lies.
The rich bribe the politicians via campaign contributions and lucrative employment in “think tanks. The rich bribe the economists via university endowments and direct payments. The rich bribe the media via advertising dollars and outright ownership. They all preach the same lies:
- Lie: The federal debt is unsustainable.
- Lie: The federal deficit is unsustainable.
- Lie: The government, like a household or business, must live within its means
- Lie: A federal surplus is more prudent than a federal deficit
- Lie: Federal taxes fund federal spending.
- Lue: Federal trust funds will run short of dollars
- Lie: Federal spending causes inflation
Not one of the above is true, though all are widely believed because of propaganda by politicians, economists and the media.
The final lie, about inflation, is insidious, because misleading statistics can be used to back it up. After all, didn’t the infamous Zimbabwe inflation correspond to the issuance of billion-dollar paper currency? And didn’t the infamous German inflation correspond with people carrying paper currency wheelbarrows?
Yes, issuing currency often has been the ignorant response to inflation. But the cause of inflation always is a shortage of crucial goods and/or services — usually energy or food. That was true for Zimbabwe. It was true for Germany. It is the fundamental truth in economics: Shortages cause prices to rise.
So, the cure for inflation is to cure the shortages, usually by government spending to produce, acquire, and distribute the scarce goods and services that caused the inflation. Often more spending, not less.
When you use USAFacts, you will get facts, but be careful of the inferences. Facts can be enlightening, but inferences can put you in the dark.
Rodger Malcolm Mitchell
#Monetary Sovereignty - Mitchell 