[WestwardHo]

It's worse than a Ponzi Scheme when Social Security benefits are paid out to people who have never worked.
Example: Friend died in a plane crash. He worked for the Forest Service. His lucrative retirement went to his widow who never worked. She also received SS benefits for her three young children until they turned 18yrs. After his death she went to work, but the SS continued.
This is unsustainable....and in the end retirees who spent years paying in will end up with nothing.
Want to discuss SS payments going to foreign countries to persons previously married to Americans...?
The American worker is not a bottomless money pit.

[rightwingintelligentsia]

SS is also not an "investment" scheme, because if someone has paid into the system for years, but dies before retirement age (or shortly thereafter) with no eligible heirs (a surviving spouse or minor children), the money is absorbed into the system to pay someone else.