the bottom line is that the Social Security is bankrupt. It expenditures vastly exceed its revenues and it has no assets. An IOU issued to itself by itself is not an asset in any meaningful way. Try getting a bank loan using IOUs written to yourself. The only thing propping the “program” up since 2010 is the Treasury Department’s ability to borrow money from our children and grandchildren (after taxing 12% of their payroll checks, by the way) by “printing” more of it via a keyboard. There is no program to speak of. Taxes and borrowed money from the young come in one end of the US government and checks for senior citizens go out the other.