A ponzi scheme is a guy (like Ponzi himself) who decides he will defraud suckers by making a up an investment that never really exists. The first few investors get paid high returns, so they’ll tell their friends, and reinvest themselves. Once a large amount of investment is collected, the schemer runs away a rich man, and the investors get nothing.
So why’s this different than SS?
1. There is no schemer; there’s no one getting rich by deception; there’s no one to run away with the money.
2. There is no investment, real or fake. A lot of people think SS has something to do with investment - it does not. It is a unique thing, unrelated to the stock market or bonds or gold or any other type of investment.
3. There is no fraud. Everything is open and above board. We know where every penny goes
4. It cannot collapse and go to zero. It has a constant inflow of cash which grows with inflation and is safer than any other inflow of cash, because it is a fixed percentage of all American wages. SS will be the last thing in the country to lose income, after every other thing has fallen to zero.
It is true that projections are for SS to hand out less than it takes in. Big deal. The income is at least 75% of desired pay outs for the rest of the century. That means (a) SS checks are reduced in size, or (b) worker withholdings are increased, or (c) the withholding cut off is raised, or (d) a combination of these three things.
I think it is simply “popular” to complain about SS. I don’t think those who complain about it seriously consider the facts, like it’s only 6.2% of your paycheck (and the return to you post retirement is somewhere around 24% of your paycheck, so it’s not even a bad deal). You still have 93.8% to have as many private, non-government savings investments as you want. And it performs a function you probably don’t understand - it allows cheap labor (like $8/hour Denny workers). Without SS, those Denny workers would be condemning themselves to old age poverty, or you’d have to spend more at Dennys to cover their retirement needs. SS actually lowers the price of things for you.
I hate this pile-on on SS, and I hate the mischaracterizations of it. We are supposed to think for ourselves! Anyone who honestly believes SS is a ponzi scheme or “stealing” is not thinking for themself.
You completely missed my point and are apparently not aware of the current situation. Forget projections, SS FICA taxes afunding a fraction of SS benefits right now, the rest is coming from new treasury bills and national debt. It is degraded into welfare now, which means it cant last in its present form.