You say "unfunded liability" like it's a bad thing, but it's perfectly normal for the government to promise to do things based on future tax revenue.
The choice here is (1) tax people ahead of time, invest in financial markets for X years, then pay it out, (2) wait until the money is needed and tax it then, (3) spend first, tax later (deficit spending).
In case (1) you'd have no government debt (no U.S. Treasury market) and the government owning a large part of the private sector. In (2) you'd have neither a treasury market nor assets. (This is sort of like how non-profits work.) For (3) you have what we have today, which is a huge number of treasuries available, which everyone depends on as a safe investment.
It's not clear that having $13.6 trillion in treasuries available for investors (including foreign governments) to own is actually a problem. Lots of investors like having a safe investment. There's sure to be some level that's too high, but it's unclear what it is.
> actual savings accounts
This is another way of increasing government intervention in the financial system via owning financial assets. (Presumably there would be rules about which investments are allowed and when they can be withdrawn, so the government would still have a lot of control over this money.)
> not inherent in the concept of a pension system
The difference is that individuals and private pension funds need assets because they don't have a guaranteed source of income and can actually run out of money. The main risk for the U.S. government is Congress deciding to start a financial crisis. But that's politics, not being unable to raise the money.
> legally impossible
It happens all the time. Look up open market operations. The Federal Reserve sent almost $100 billion to the U.S. Treasury last year. [1]
(That's just an aside. Compared to $3200 billion total revenue, it's not that much, and I agree that it would not scale to paying off government debt, or even paying the interest. Still, nothing to sneeze at.)
I think you're focusing too much on accounting labels, and need to step back and look at the bigger picture. From the point of view of the economy as a whole, the baby boomer generation retiring is extremely expensive. In general, societies need to budget around extremely expensive events like that, eg, deferring other expenses, making sacrifices, saving up in preparation.
You seem to be arguing that, uniquely, the US doesn't need to do this; they can just promise whatever, then borrow all the money cheaply from foreigners. Perhaps so! And I really, really hope you're right (and all the textbooks, financial models, and experts are wrong).
> they don't have a guaranteed source of income and can actually run out of money.
That income is finite, therefore, the US can most certainly "run out of money", hence why the budget is a nasty political fight every single year. Now, it is highly likely that the politics of social security will make it a priority come what may, and thus I'm confident that money can be found for it, but only at the expense of other things. Hopefully none of them end up being important. But the reality of social security is that the national savings rate when the baby boomers were at their most productive was extremely low. (Even right now, the US savings rate is almost half that of the EU-15.)
In a different universe, the US would have saved more during the long post-war boom, and would be in a much better shape to, eg, pay for the boomers retirement and replace our aging infrastructure.
> It happens all the time. Look up open market operations
The Federal Reserve does not (and cannot) retire or forgive the US debt it holds.
The choice here is (1) tax people ahead of time, invest in financial markets for X years, then pay it out, (2) wait until the money is needed and tax it then, (3) spend first, tax later (deficit spending).
In case (1) you'd have no government debt (no U.S. Treasury market) and the government owning a large part of the private sector. In (2) you'd have neither a treasury market nor assets. (This is sort of like how non-profits work.) For (3) you have what we have today, which is a huge number of treasuries available, which everyone depends on as a safe investment.
It's not clear that having $13.6 trillion in treasuries available for investors (including foreign governments) to own is actually a problem. Lots of investors like having a safe investment. There's sure to be some level that's too high, but it's unclear what it is.
> actual savings accounts
This is another way of increasing government intervention in the financial system via owning financial assets. (Presumably there would be rules about which investments are allowed and when they can be withdrawn, so the government would still have a lot of control over this money.)
> not inherent in the concept of a pension system
The difference is that individuals and private pension funds need assets because they don't have a guaranteed source of income and can actually run out of money. The main risk for the U.S. government is Congress deciding to start a financial crisis. But that's politics, not being unable to raise the money.
> legally impossible
It happens all the time. Look up open market operations. The Federal Reserve sent almost $100 billion to the U.S. Treasury last year. [1]
(That's just an aside. Compared to $3200 billion total revenue, it's not that much, and I agree that it would not scale to paying off government debt, or even paying the interest. Still, nothing to sneeze at.)
[1] https://www.federalreserve.gov/newsevents/press/other/201601...