Trust Fund: real? Um, yes.

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December is make-or-break for Mother Jones’ fundraising, and in "No Cute Headlines or Manipulative BS," we hope that giving it to you as matte-of-fact as we can will work to raise the $350,000 we need to raise this month. Donations make up 74 percent of our budget this year, and all online gifts will be matched and go twice as far until we hit our goal.

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Oh, okay. Since it appears some of our commenters (well, just one really) are under the illusion that the Social Security Trust Fund doesn’t exist, let me link once again to Dean Baker’s excellent introductory essay on the subject. (PDF here, or HTML here.) We’ve written here on the subject many times, but the background essay will have to do for now. Yes, the Trust Fund exists. Yes, it can be paid back. (One thing that rarely gets mentioned is that Medicare has been redeeming its own Trust Fund bonds for the past year, with no problem at all.) Yes, “defaulting” on the thing will involve very high transfers of wealth from low- to high-earners.