Three U.S. ex-presidents denounce the current one in a two-week stretch

[radiochaser]

On 6/1/2025 at 11:51 PM, RocketDog said:

Casting large groups of people into a single simplistic category has the advantage of being mentally unchallenging and entirely precludes the need for structured judgment and discernment. A lazy mind is a happy mind.☺️

 

Well done. You earned 2 Lazada Coins. 

 

Personally I find mammals repulsive. Aquatic life is tolerable if it stays under the water. Avians just clutter the skies and deserve to be sucked into jet engines.

 

What say you Ted?

 

You mean like democrats saying (in an email to me)

 

Republicans are a bunch of overgrown schoolyard bullies.

Our constituents shouldn’t have to suffer because Republicans want to act like children. This pettiness needs to end. I was there ready to ask questions on nuclear non-proliferation and US support for our democratic allies in Europe.

 

 

Or this from January 2023.   Didn't happen did it?  Note the "terrorists" claim.  Who let potential terrorist's into the U.S. unvetted?

 

MAGA Republicans in the U.S. House are planning a US government shutdown to force President Biden to destroy essential programs like Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, Veterans benefits, public schools, college loans, and climate jobs.

President Biden will not give in to these MAGA terrorist demands, so the United States will default on its bonds, triggering an economic meltdown.

• Stock markets will collapse, wiping out pension funds, 501ks, and IRAs.

• Interest rates will soar, canceling investments in construction and manufacturing.

• The U.S. government will be unable to pay the military, Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, etc.

• State and local governments will be unable to pay police, teachers, firefighters, hospitals, etc.

Before long, the U.S. will be in a Depression.

[gamb00ler]

17 hours ago, JimGant said:

I think you've lost the gist of this discussion. Perhaps it's time to go back to Canada. 

Welll..... a deafening silence on your analysis

 

Here's the gist that you have apparently lost:

TedG incorrectly stated:

1) that the SS trust funds started to decline in 2010.

2) the Feds are borrowing from themsleves(sic).

3) When the Special T bills are redeemed, the taxpayer has to pay again, or the federal government borrows money to pay back the Department of SS, which adds to the debt and deficit, another expense to the taxpayer

4) Or the money is borrowed by the feds, which adds to the debt and deficit, another expense to the taxpayer.

5) Since 2010, it has been running a cash-flow deficit.

 

TedG is correct in the sense that the FICA taxes alone do not cover the benefits paid since 2010.  He chooses to ignore the interest income the trust funds earn which until 2021 was sufficient to cover the shortfall in FICA collection.  The shortfall in FICA income is very widely known and I never disputed it.

 

TedG continually states that taxpayers have already paid extra costs because they are dinged for the interest on the special SS Treasury bills purchased by the SS trust fund.  He doesn't understand they would have been charged the same interest if any other lender/investor had purchased the Treasury bills required to cover the national debt.

 

So I disagree.... I have not lost any gist.  TedG has and now I'm thinking you may have also.

[JimGant]

1 hour ago, gamb00ler said:

Since 2010, it has been running a cash-flow deficit.

That's the key to this whole argument. That the SS trust fund has been amassing Treasury IOU credits via interest IOUs -- is a nice accounting gesture -- making payouts between 2010 and 2021 seem like a non event, as the trust fund actually increased in value. Why? Well, SS had to make up for the cash deficit, ie, cash benefit payouts exceeding cash pay ins -- by finally cashing in those Treasury IOUs for real, touchy feely, payable to beneficiaties -- cash!  But incoming interest IOUs exceeded this amount -- until 2021.

 

And the result was -- that the Treasury had to raid the general tax fund, or sell more bonds to China for real cash, to obtain that cash to pay for those SS Trust fund cashed-in IOUs. And the result was an increase in the Federal deficit.

 

But, holy smoke -- that huge SS trust fund, even reduced by cashed in IOUs -- earned more interest IOUs than the IOUs necessarily cashed in. This between 2010 and 2021. So, it looked like the SS trust fund was solvent up until 2021. And this is what you mistakenly maintain. You've been hoodwinked by an accounting mechanism. Any MBA knows cash flow accounting, not financial accounting, is how you look at reality.

 

Anyway, way too much time wasted on this. A Google search of "ss cash deficit" will give better explanations than I can.

 

And, I alluded to your Canadian connection. Any meaningful comparisons of US SS with the Canadian equivalent? That might be enlightening.

Cheers.

[TedG]

23 hours ago, gamb00ler said:

@JimGant @TedG, you guys really need to break this SSA <-> Treasury thing down to its components and remove the emotion from your analysis.

 

If SSA was a private company selling inflation adjusted annuities via monthly premiums to a group of US customers and it invested the accumulating capital in Treasury bills/bonds.... what would you say about that practice?  What would be the impact on US taxpayers?

SSA is not a private company.   SSA is a government agency.   All debt is a libality to the tax payer. 

[TedG]

23 hours ago, gamb00ler said:

I never posted anything that disagrees with your above statement.  I do however completely disagree with your notion that because the SS lends funds to the Treasury that the taxpayers are paying extra.

 

The tax payers are paying extra.  Where does the money come from to repay the loan? 

[TedG]

On 6/3/2025 at 7:29 AM, gamb00ler said:

I never said anything that disagrees with your take.  I believe that the SS trust funds were mandated from the beginning to ONLY invest in Treasury bills.  I don't think that practice began in 2010. 

 

Which means the federal government has looted the trust fund since day one. 

[TedG]

On 6/3/2025 at 6:34 AM, JimGant said:

 

Indeed. The whole SS program is a cash flow entity -- pay-as-you-go with collected cash; any surplus cash is loaned to the Treasury to buy aircraft carriers, in exchange for an IOU; money from taxes collected on SS benefits paid also go to the Treasury, in exchange for an IOU. And interest on this whole conglomeration in the Trust fund is credited annually to the Trust fund -- solely as IOUs. 

 

This whole thing is an accounting entity. Thus, with IOUs from interest, the Trust fund has a positive balance that says the Fund was solvent until 2021. But it's IOUs -- NOT cash -- that allowed for this accounting picture. Thus, the Fund went broke in 2010, when cash out exceeded cash in. Simple. So, don't let the accounting slight-of-hand lead you astray: IOUs are not the same as cash. 

 

Actually, we could discard the whole Trust Fund concept -- again, it's only an accounting gimmick, so we can see the comparison of cash taxes collected against cash benefit payouts. Why not just have SS as a line item on the annual Congressional budget -- to be covered, like all the other line items, with general tax collections. Then, if there's an overrun in outlays -- like what usually happens with most line items in a Congressional budget -- eat the overrun, like you'd do with F-35s -- and then just add that to all the others, in the annual budget overrun figure (and kick the can down the road, like we always have -- why make SS any different from any other "must pay" govt programs....?)

 

I agree.  But, there are some people fail to understand the money flows.