Economist Calls Entitlements A Massive Ponzi Scheme And Says US Is Actually $211 Trillion In Debt

In an interview with NPR, former Reagan economic adviser Laurence Kotlikoff said the U.S.'s "true indebtedness" amounts to $211 trillion.

"We're focused just on the official debt, so we're trying to balance the wrong books," Kotlikoff said, naming Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid for the skyrocketing unofficial figure.

“We've got 78 million baby boomers who are poised to collect, in about 15 to 20 years, about $40,000 per person. Multiply 78 million by $40,000 — you're talking about more than $3 trillion a year just to give to a portion of the population...”

The first of the baby boomers began collecting full SS this year. (Some early boomers began collecting reduced SS in 2008 at age 62.) There were about 78 million boomers who were born between 1946 and 1964, but some of them have already died and many more will die in the next 15-20 years. Also, the average annual SS income for the surviving members of this group will be substantially less than $40,000 per year. So, it's an exaggeration to multiply 78 million by $40,000 and conclude that in 15 to 20 years boomers will be collecting $3 trillion a year in SS. Nevertheless, Kotlikoff is correct to say that the SS indebtedness is a ticking fiscal time bomb. It just doesn't have quite the explosive power he claimed.

"Someone needs to put this in practical terms. In other words, explain the pain we and our children and their children will have to bear because of this. Otherwise it’s nothing more than a big number."

Try this:

* One million seconds equals 12 years.

* One billion seconds equals 32 years.

* One trillion seconds equals 32,000 years.

We Are Doomed (WAD)

I hope this helps.

"Economic gravity exists so the benefits will not be paid in a currency that will provide the expected purchasing power. A Greek type failure is coming with the fall of the dollar. No one wants to start the terrible adjustment required for a highly devalued dollar but the dollar's decline is inevitable, probably starting from panick over some event."

How will that work?
Will the government just say that the dollar is worth (say) 30% less today than it was yesterday?

Great post and an OUTSTANDING thread! Thanks to every poster. We are getting somewhere by talking about these socialist poison-pill schemes and all the rest of their parasitic collectives that are sucking us dry.

The socialists have a solution for all of this...Hillarycare/Obamacare/Totalitiariancare. It will drain any assets that you have acquired from your accounts. In return you'll get "Treatment Denied" notification by the death panel commission. More dead Americans...FORCED to pay their entire life but never using a dime in services...that is the goal. Dead Americans are what funds the system. How evil are these socialists? Very. Witness history. Socialism/totalitarianism always degenerates into plunder and lots of dead people. Make no mistake about neo-totalitarianism. It's still war. They'll make it your duty to die.

DEFUND socialist collectives, any and all of them. Start, NOW. Eliminate totalitariancare.

Usually, however, these gentlemen — the reformers, the legislators, and the writers on public affairs — do not desire to impose direct despotism upon mankind. Oh no, they are too moderate and philanthropic for such direct action. Instead, they turn to the law for this despotism, this absolutism, this omnipotence. They desire only to make the laws.

It is impossible to introduce into society a greater change and a greater evil than this: the conversion of the law into an instrument of plunder.

Above all, if you wish to be strong, begin by rooting out every particle of socialism that may have crept into your legislation. This will be no light task. - The Law -Frederic Bastiat 1801-1850

"How will that work?
Will the government just say that the dollar is worth (say) 30% less today than it was yesterday?"

Have a look at what was done with the Argentina peso. the following keywords should get you there pretty quick.

argentina default peso devaluated

Here's a good search engine for that (some privacy there).

https://ssl.scroogle.org/

BTW, many would say that our dollar is floated, but I would argue with that. There's too much concentration from globalists, governments and their sponsored propagandists on certain currencies (examples, the recent, suspicious move of big money from stocks and commodities to treasuries just after the debt downgrade, and previously, request to and acknowledgement from group of world bankers from a commodity-rich net exporter for lower currency).

If it were such a free world market, the dollar would already have fallen more to balance with currencies of countries that we have trade deficits with (e.g., Chinese consumerism and inflation). Granted, that's a whole other ball of dung coated with gobs of anti-American trade propaganda.

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