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Social Security
The Trust Fund Nonsense
By: Ed Henry (Edited for space considerations)
Outside of the beltway, in the real world that you and I live in, a trust fund is a legally defined mechanism handled by one or more people entrusted with the management of property. That "property" may be a building, land, farm, business, investment such as stock, actual cash or any combination or collection of valuable and marketable items or what is commonly known as wealth. Property that is meant to be kept safe and available at some point or points to the beneficiaries of the trust; i.e., the people who put the property into trust, their heirs or designees.
In most cases, that property is not meant to sit idle while losing purchasing power to things like inflation, but invested wisely by the trustees so that, at a very minimum, it has its original purchasing power the day it is withdrawn. Hopefully, and if the trustees are really competent investors, the property will gain even more purchasing power in their hands.
ON THE OTHER HAND...
Government trust funds are the only trusts in the world where beneficiaries are also the guarantors, where "investments" put you in the hole and every extra dollar contributed becomes another dollar owed. Where the phrase "less than nothing" really means something.
At best, government trust funds are debit accounts meant to tell the general fund Treasury how much money it may legally disburse to some cause authorized by Congress and the Administration, including perks politicians set up for themselves.
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