It's often said that everyone in Washington is so smart that they skipped directly from 2nd grade to 4th grade. This explains why so many people in top positions don't know third grade arithmetic.
The WSJ gave us another example of this lack of knowledge when it listed Medicare and Social Security as "the U.S.'s biggest budget busters." In fact, those of us who did sit through third grade know that Social Security actually is running an annual surplus. The amount of money it takes in each year on the designated Social Security tax and the interest it collects on its bonds exceeds what it pays out in benefits.
While Medicare's costs are rising rapidly due to the broken private health care system, Social Security is a money loser in the same way as IPOD is for Apple.
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