No Trust Fund

In an amazing coincidence, Will Wilkinson points to an article that explains how the Social Security Trust Fund works. The easiest explanation? It doesn't.

In short, the Social Security trust fund is really only an accounting mechanism. The trust fund shows how much the government has borrowed from Social Security, but it does not provide any way to finance future benefits. The money to repay the IOUs will have to come from taxes that are being used today to pay for other government programs.

Nice, huh? No, I'm not bitter about this, not at all. I'm especially not bitter seeing as how it's tax time again. The amount that J and I pay in all our federal taxes would be considered a decent living for an individual. Unless, of course, they had to pay taxes on it. Actually, I see from my handy tax stats at the IRS that the amount we pay in federal taxes (including Medicare and OASDI taxes) is well above the median AGI for tax year 2002.