Swing and a miss

Neal Boortz is so close, and yet so far:

In just about 11 years, in 2017, we won't be collecting enough in Social Security taxes to pay the benefits that will be due to baby boom retirees. In other words, It will be time to head to that filing cabinet in West Virginia, take some of the IOUs out, and present them to the U.S. Treasury for redemption.

But how do you pay off those IOUs when you're already spending every single penny you make? Well ... there's only a few possibilities. You borrow the money and go deeper in debt; you raise taxes on the already tax-oppressed Americans to get the needed funds, or you simply default on the IOU. You could, of course, cut spending in other areas to come up with the money --- but remember who we're talking about here. Even for a congress that has doubled federal spending over the past decade or so, cutting spending even by one single dollar is simply not an option.

On the spending, amen and amen. On the solution to the SocSec Ponzi problem, Neal is a brainiac trial lawyer and not an economist, so it's no surprise that he chased one trailing away. The choices are not borrow or tax or default. They are borrow or tax or default or create the necessary money out of thin air, completely destroying the value of the dollar and driving the price of everything real to the moon in a hyperinflationary orgy of pain.

Of those 4 options, which one is the easiest for politicians and most hidden from the public view in the short term?

Answer that question and you'll know where the pitch is coming...