
Note to readers: Someone in comments below mentioned the widely misunderstood Social Security Trust Fund. I am somewhat a wonk, and have written about such matters. (I realize that issues of aging have limited appeal, which is why I asked the younger Fauxlex aboard, to write about issues with broader appeal.) Rather than rewrite the piece on the Trust Fund, I am simply re-dating it. If all goes according to plan, it should appear below with the original comment thread intact. From 6/26/2018:
The above image is making the rounds on Facebook. Later in this post I will talk about the so-called “Social Security Trust Fund” and how it never was and never will be. For now I want to thank my friend Kevin for putting up his post directly below called A Crashing Success, as it offers an easy and early escape from this post about (cue violin screech) … taxes!!!
Go now, quickly, or prepare to be flooded with the conceptual abstractions that are used to justify the theft of our hard-earned money. The words “hard-earned” are important, as there are other forms of wealth that are easily owned by people who by pure chance slid down the right birth canals – trust funds, stocks and bonds, inherited wealth and Cayman bank accounts. The essential feature of taxation is that hard-earned money is heavily taxed, while the birth-canal funds are only lightly touched, if at all, by the IRS.
So journey with me now beneath the fold, or make your escape. The particular tax I am going to write about has a name you might know, one that sounds like a disease or the claw of a wild beast. It is called … “FICA.” From that word springs the myth of something called a “Trust Fund.”
Continue reading “What of this “Trust” Fund?” →