[ridesthemiles]

How many people paid into SS & died early? All they got was $255 for burial costs.

Lots of people die without any dependents, so there is no other money paid out.

[bethtopaz]

Here’s a link to Michael Ramirez’s latest cartoon on Ponzi schemes: http://cfif.org/v/index-mc1.php?cartoonMonth=2011-09&start=PonziSchemes.jpg&nr=0

Hope it opens for you.

[ngat]

“Is Social Security a Ponzi scheme? Of course it is, money from current investors was used to pay Ida May’s bill far beyond her investment. But there is a distinction. Social Security is a mandatory Ponzi scheme.”

There is another difference, just as significant as the mandatory part. The participants know all this; in a real Ponzi Scheme, the paying off of old investors with the new investors’ money is concealed.

[mountainlion]

Taxes are a ponzi schemes also. You pay for other that what you are being told you are. FAA collects take off and landing for airsystem repairs and fees which go to the general fund so the deficit has to be raised to fix airports. Gas tax goes is said to go to fix roads but ends up in the general funds and we have to raise the deficit to build roads. Our votes are a ponzi scams also as we give our votes for one promise only to be repaid with something opposite.

[SampleMan]

At time of passage ss collection was set close to average age of death. There were also a lot more people at the base of the peramid because of larger families. Adding 20 hrs to avg age and cutting family size in half has made ss untenable.

[Oshkalaboomboom]

When Ida May Fuller received the first Social Security check for $22.54 in 1940 she had paid into the system in the amount of $24.75. By the time of her death in 1975 at the age of 100 years she had received payments totaling $22,882 and change.

What this article fails to note is that the $22.54 she received was when the average monthly wage was five times higher, around $125/month, and that over her lifetime she received an average of $52/month. She just happened to live a lot longer than most. In other words, just like the SS recipients of today she lived very modestly. The Ponzi schemers getting rich are the politicians who encouraged generations of people to let the government do their saving for them and now they are hopelessly dependent on the government to keep their pittances coming.

[Repeal The 17th]

“The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts and excises, to pay the debts and provide for the common defense and general welfare of the United States...”
-
“The States”; The People” and “The United States” carry different meanings in the Constitution, and it is carefully specific and explicit in the usage of these terms.

Article 1 Section 8 does NOT say “...provide for the general welfare of “The People”.

[CynicalBear]

Not getting into whether it’s a ponzi scheme or not but I give very little credit to an article that starts out with that example but doesn’t include the example of the millions who pay into it for a lifetime but die prior to getting anything.

[supercat]

A fundamental problem with SS is politicians' continual equivocation about whether or to what extent promised SS payouts represent any form of binding obligation upon the government.

If they do represent a binding obligation, then the present cash value of all promised future payments represents debt, and the government has been lying enormously about its financial stability. If they do not represent a binding obligation, then the government has been taking large amounts of people's money in return for absolutely nothing. It's unclear to what extent SS should really be viewed one way or the other, but what is clear is that if it were viewed as being at least a 50% obligation there would be mobs with torches and pitchforks going after those in power for so grossly understating the debt, and if it's viewed as being a less-than-50% obligation those in power would be chased out for having robbed the people who paid in lots of money.

Personally, my view is that promised SS payouts are not a legitimate binding obligation; those who would hope to receive them had plenty of time to get out the torches and pitchforks but didn't do so. If they decided they'd rather pay the robbers than shut them down, that was their decision but--having paid the robbers--they, and not their descendants, should be the ones to pay for it.

I do think that in the interest of maintaining social stability it would be worthwhile to pay out enough so retirees don't starve, but that does not imply that retirees should consider themselves morally entitled to such payments. There was once a time when the acceptance of any government largess was viewed as a sign of moral weakness. Much of the decay in society can be attributed to the increasing rarity of that view.

[calfcreek]

Thanks for reading.
What makes it a Ponzi scheme is that the money you put in is spent. Then when you collect, new citizens payments are used to pay you. It matters not whether they have enough based on who dies early or whatever. Saying it is not one, because it is known is disingenuous as well. It was ‘sold’ as an insurance plan but it is not. It is a tax, nothing more, nothing less. The gov’t has been sued by those who say the gov’t has no authority to run an insurance plan in the Constitution. SCOTUS determined that it is not an insurance plan, there is no direct link between the tax and SS payments. It basically sets up a bureaucracy to manage it all, but legally there is no obligation to pay. It is a tax with a promise to pay. Nothing more.
Tweaking SS will not save it as the real problem is politicians who will use it to make promises that can't be paid for. As I stated in the article the only way to save it is to take it off budget and force it to be run revenue neutral. That way any new promise would have to be funded. This basically takes the politicians out of the equation.
Thanks again for reading.

Keith D. Rodebush