"Wes" wrote in message
...
"Ed Huntress" wrote:

But there never was any place to *store* the money. Everyone knew from the
start that this is how it would work. That's why many of us laugh when we
hear about the "trust fund."


And some of us are outraged that our federal government misrepresented how
FICA was used
to finance a government that had un-sound financial policies.

I'm only p*ss*ed, I knew the screw was on for a long, long time.

Wes

With all due respect, Wes, they never hid how it works. People just didn't
pay attention. This was all thoroughly explained and vetted back in the
'80s, when Greenspan was selling an increase in the FICA rate to Congress.

This is a complicated government. Its finances work astoundingly well, and
it's not at all hard to understand the basics. But most people don't bother
to look into it, and wind up being suspicious and paranoid about the whole
thing.

There are so many cheap-shot ways to criticize it that Congress generally
keeps pretty quiet about it. But they don't hide it. That's unfortunate in
several ways, one of which we're paying for now: it's given the Tea Partiers
a whole string of cheap-shot arguments.

I'm sure that most of them don't know how it all works. And they're counting
on most of the country not knowing how it works. That's how they get people
worked up and angry -- by selling them a bunch of baloney, playing on their
suspicions and their lack of understanding. That's what creates paranoia.

--
Ed Huntress