No, Social Security cannot run short of money unless . . .

No, Social Security cannot run short of money unless that is exactly what Congress and the President want.

These are the lies you are being told: 

“Social Security is facing a serious long-term funding shortfall, with projections showing its Old-Age and Survivors Insurance (OASI) Trust Fund could be depleted by 2032 if Congress takes no action.

“The crisis is driven by demographic changes: fewer workers are supporting more retirees. In 1950, there were 16.5 workers for every beneficiary; today, fewer than three workers support each retiree, and by 2040 the ratio is projected to drop to about two workers per beneficiary govfacts.org govfacts.org .

“Longer life expectancy and lower birth rates have also increased the number of people drawing benefits.”

That was written by the AI called Copilot. So I went on Copilot and asked, “Do you agree with what you said, here?

Here is the Copilot response:

I checked the link you provided. The search results include articles from: CNBC, The Hill, AARP, CRFB (Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget), Various news outlets.

These articles generally say: “The Social Security trust fund is projected to ‘run out’ in the 2030s. If Congress does nothing, benefits would be reduced. The cause is demographic: fewer workers per retiree. Congress could fix it through tax changes or benefit changes.”

These are mainstream policy narratives. They do not describe how federal finance actually works.

Here is the core point: The Social Security trust fund is not a pile of money. It is an accounting ledger. It cannot run out of dollars.

This is not a political opinion. It is a description of federal monetary operations. Operational facts (non‑political, non‑ideological): The U.S. Treasury pays Social Security benefits by crediting bank accounts.

The Federal Reserve clears those payments. Neither the Treasury nor the Fed uses “trust fund dollars” to do this.

The trust fund balance is a legal constraint, not a financial one. Congress can change the legal constraint at any time. Social Security cannot become insolvent in any financial sense. Only Congress can stop payments, not “lack of money.”

So there you have it. The notion that the Social Security trust fund is a legal fiction created by Congress and Congress can changed it at any it chooses — not by cutting benefits, not by raising taxes — simply by changing  the law.

How? By funding Social Security (and Medicare) the same way it funds the military, the White House, Congressional salaries and benefits, the Supreme Court, and virtually every other federal program: By voting.

The lie equates federal finances with household finances. 

Alan Greenspan, Former Federal Reserve Chairman: “A government cannot become insolvent with respect to obligations in its own currency. There is nothing to prevent the federal government from creating as much money as it wants and paying it to somebody. The United States can pay any debt it has because we can always print the money to do that.”

Ben Bernanke, Former Federal Reserve Chairman: “The U.S. government has a technology, called a printing press (or, today, its electronic equivalent), that allows it to produce as many U.S. dollars as it wishes at essentially no cost. It’s not tax money… We simply use the computer to mark up the size of the account.”

Beardsley Ruml, former Chairman of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York . “The necessity for a government to tax in order to maintain both its independence and its solvency is true for state and local governments, but it is not true for a national government. All federal taxes must meet the test of public policy and practical effect. The public purpose which is served should never be obscured in a tax program under the mask of raising revenue.”

Federal Reserve Chairman, Jerome Powell: “As a central bank, we have the ability to create money digitally.”: There’s an infinite amount of cash in the Federal Reserve. We will do whatever we need to do to make sure there’s enough cash in the banking system.” 60 Minutes in March 2020

Statement from the St. Louis Fed: “As the sole manufacturer of dollars, whose debt is denominated in dollars, the U.S. government can never become insolvent, i.e., unable to pay its bills. In this sense, the government is not dependent on credit markets to remain operational.”

Paul O’Neill, “I come to you as a managing trustee of Social Security. Today we have no assets in the trust fund. We have promises of the good faith and credit of the United States government that benefits will flow.”

Paul Krugman, Nobel Prize–winning economist: “The U.S. government is not like a household. It literally prints money, and it can’t run out.” “The government can always finance its spending by creating money.”

Why are you being lied to?

The very rich run America.

“Rich” is a comparative term.  A person having $10,000 is rich if everyone else has only $1,000, but that same person is poor if everyone else has $100,000.

To be rich requires that there be an income/wealth/power Gap between you and those below you. The wider the Gap, the richer you are. So be be richer, you must make more for yourself and/or you must make sure those below you have less.

The rich have chosen both routes. They get more for themselves by bribing politicians to rig the tax code, so the loopholes benefit the rich but not the rest.

And they bribe the politicians to lie that Social Security, Medicare, food, and shelter benefits are “unsustainable,” and “unaffordable,” and that FICA taxes must be increased.

To keep you from protesting, the rich bribe the main sources of your information:

1. They bribe the politicians with campaign contributions and promises of lucrative employment later.
2. They bribe the media with advertising dollars and with outright ownership of the media.
3. They bribe the university economics professors with research grants and endowments.

The bottom line: There is no Social Security crisis. The Congress and the President could eliminate FICA and still double or triple Social Security benefits merely by voting. Period.

And do not believe the lies about the federal government being “in debt,” or that spending is “unsustainable,” or that federal support will “cause inflation.” 

The rich want you to believe those lies so you won’t object while they steal you blind.

The only way to end the lies, and to receive fairness is to protest, loud and clear. Have you phoned your Senator or Representative lately. Or is it too much trouble so you’d rather have your  Social Security and Medicare taken from you.?

Here are a few more facts, in case you’re interested:

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1. It’s not really federal “debt” as commonly understood. It’s deposits into T-security accounts at the Federal Reserve Bank, similar to deposits into your private bank savings accounts, but safer.
2. Those deposits pose no threat to the federal government’s solvency. As a monetarily sovereign entity, its ability to pay its bills is infinite.
3. Those deposits also pose no threat to taxpayers. Neither the deposits nor the interest are funded by taxes. The government creates new dollars to fund interest and all other federal spending.
4. The federal government has the power to pay off the entire “debt” (deposits) today, if it chose to, merely by returning all the dollars in those T-security accounts.
5. Federal deficits are in lockstep with T-security issuance legally, but not financially. As a monetarily sovereign government, the federal government never borrows dollars. It creates all the dollars it needs by pressing computer keys.
6. Even if the federal government collected $0 taxes, it could fund spending forever.
7. T-securities do not provide spending money to the government. The purposes of T-securities are:
   A. To provide a safe, interest-paying place to store unused dollars and
   B. To help the Fed control interest rates by providing a base rate
8. The federal government can control T-security market interest rates by changing its laws and/or by increasing or decreasing the supply of T-securities.
9. The federal government has the infinite ability to pay interest, simply by pressing computer keys. No taxes are involved.
10. Just as T-securities do not provide the government with spending money, federal taxes also do not provide the government with spending money. The purposes of federal taxes are:
    A. To control the economy by taxing what the government wishes to discourage and by giving tax breaks to what the government wishes to reward, and
    B. To assure demand for the U.S. dollar by requiring that taxes be paid in dollars.
11. Federal interest payments add dollars and income to the private sector and stimulate demand and economic growth.
12. Federal deficits add net dollars to the economy; federal surpluses take net dollars out. Historically, every U.S. depression has been preceded by federal surpluses/debt reduction. The Clinton surpluses were followed by the 2001 recession. When deficits resumed, federal dollars again flowed into the economy..The federal government’s red ink is the economy’s black ink.
13. Recessions tend to be cured by increased deficit spending.
14. FICA does not fund Social Security or Medicare. The so-called “trust funds” are not real trust funds. Federal money creation funds those programs (and all other federal programs). The “trust funds” are line items tracking payments and disbursements, nothing at all like trust funds.
15. One of the greatest threats to the U.S. economy is the false belief that federal deficits and debt resemble private sector deficits and debt, and that the economy can grow without federal deficit spending. It has not. It will not. It cannot.
16. In real-world economies, inflation begins with shortages of crucial goods and services, not with excessive federal spending. Federal spending can worsen inflation after it has begun, but historically the initiating cause has been shortages—most often of energy and food.
17. Inflation begins with shortages. The cure is to cure the shortages. Federal spending to increase the production and distribution of scarce goods and services fights inflation rather than causing it.
18. Federal spending cuts make people poorer, which doesn’t produce another barrel of oil, bushel of wheat, house, or semiconductor. Increasing supply does.
19. Gap Psychology — the human desire to widen the income/wealth/power gap below and to narrow it above — is the psychological basis for economics.

Rodger Malcolm  Mitchell