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Ted Cruz Admits Trump Accounts Are Designed to Privatize Social Security Over Time | Common Dreams
(www.commondreams.org)
this post was submitted on 08 May 2026
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Social security is a bad investment for an individual, but most people are terrible investors if they invest into their future at all. So by giving everyone that baseline, it helps out everyone else, including the rich. And is therefore a fantastic investment for everyone.
Social security is not an investment at all. It's young people giving money to old people.
For a while, the country didn't have very many old people, so some of the young-people tax went into the general budget (through purchase of US Treasury bills). Now there's too many old people, and you can bet that the general budget won't be giving them anything.
I thought they invest any surplus into government debt securities?
Right: SSA buys a treasury bill, and congress gets to treat that as income for the general budget. For a long time, SSA was the largest holder of US debt. Their surplus has been falling, while the Federal Reserve has bought up tons of Treasuries every time there's an economic crisis and have now eclipsed SSA. Fed holds about $4.5T, while Japan holds barely $1.2T
Whether you think of these inter-governmental loans as "investments," is probably a matter of where you fall on pedantry. If I take a loan from my 401k for down payment on a house, I don't think of that as "investing" my 401k in the house.
Thanks for clarifying!