“The Greatest Generation was all for the too-good-to-be-true transfer of wealth that was the SS/Medicare Ponzi scheme.”
Social security is fully funded for the next twenty years or so. It has paid hundreds of billions in excess for the last twenty years, since Reagan raised the contributions to “save” the program. It is not a Ponzi scheme. Medicare is a problem because medical costs have risen far faster than anyone could reasonably have anticipated. Still, if you eliminated both programs, and the payroll taxes that fund them, the government would continue to run a massive deficit. The problem is not that SS/Medicare is a Ponzi scheme—it’s the the whole of government is a Ponzi scheme. We’ve been promised we can have what we want (most recently, two wars in the Middle East and free prescription drugs for seniors) without having to pay for them. And who keeps voting for the politicians that promise us that we can have more from the government and cut our taxes as well? We do. No one wants to do the math.
The biggest federal budget problem by far is Medicare, and SS is only fine for the next 20 years because it is handing out today donations that are supposed to be funding retirements 40 to 60 years into the future. That is exactly how a Ponzi scheme works.
Also, medical costs have risen so fast precisely because half of our system is socialized without even the watchdog capabilities of private sector third- or fourth-party payers.
False. According the Social Security Benefits Statement that I recently received, only 75% of the stated benefits that I have earned will be available in 2025 as a result of unfunded liabilities. But they also say that congress can change these laws to correct this.
I AM NOT KIDDING OR EXAGERATING, THE SS STATEMENTS ACUTALLY DO SAY THIS. I'm 39.
By the very definition of "Ponzi Scheme," it qualifies. When immediate wealth or monetary distribution is soley dependent on an increasing number of donators with an expected future return and no actual exchange or goods or services, it's a Ponzi Scheme. Or you could call it a pyramid scheme.
Anyway you look at it, the system is dependent on a growing population putting money into the system so that a smaller group of dependents can effectively draw from it. The problem is, the population of people contibuting to the system is not growing at a pace to keep up with those collecting from it. The last one in get caught holding the bag. That's the way Ponzi/Pyramid schemes work.