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Sorry, when one part of a government "owes" another part money, the only meaning is political rather than economic.

As far "unfunded liabilities" liabilities go, that's another politically-motivated relabeling.

The US will spend more on military spending than social security next year, just as it did last year and intends to do ten years from now. But social security is called an "unfunded liability" and military isn't. Guess why?




Source for the military spending? Wikipedia says otherwise http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2010_United_States_federal_budg...


I'd look it up but it's orthogonal to main my argument. Defense and Social Security are roughly equivalent expenses but one counts 100% as an "unfunded liability" and the other count 0% as such.




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