Posted on 02/29/2020 8:47:37 PM PST by nickcarraway
Billionaire and former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg twice compared Social Security to a Ponzi scheme when he was in office, CNN reports, which is a far cry from his current stance as a Democratic presidential candidate.
Nowadays, Bloomberg has vowed to to strengthen entitlement programs, but he used to see them as a major hurdle in the effort to shrink the United States' deficit. During appearances on his old radio program "Live from City Hall," which were reviewed by CNN's KFile, Bloomberg made the Ponzi scheme comparison once in 2006 and again in 2009. The latter instance was in relation to Bernie Madoff, who was arrested in December 2008 and later pleaded guilty to a massive Ponzi scheme.
"I don't know if Bernie Madoff got his idea from there, but if there's ever a Ponzi Scheme, people say Madoff was the biggest? Wrong," Bloomberg said. "Social Security is, far and away."
Stu Loeser, a spokesman for Bloomberg, attempted to explain Bloomberg's comments to CNN. "The Social Security Administration itself gives out detailed actuarial tables on when and how payments will exceed income, and the issue needs attention because we're running the cushion between them down," he said. "Mike believes that between now and that time, we will need to boost receipts by raising contributions from those who can best afford it, which is what he'll do as president." Read more at CNN.
When Social Security was set up, the retirement age at which you could start to receive payouts was greater than the average age of death. That fundamentally changed a long time ago.
The rats cleared the way decades ago to steal from it, leave an IOU for the tax payers to fund and now its part of the budget
Im grateful for Social Security. I worked for it. Why do two wives of the same person get it? When retired guy married a woman 20 years younger and they have 3 liitle kids. Why do those kids get it til 18. End that stuff.
All government programs are a ponzi scheme.
JoMa
Hey look at that. Mini-Mike and I agree on something.
The government’s schemes to keep it going will maintain the illusion that it is intact, but will do so by 1) continuing to raise the age at which people can collect benefits, and 2) paying with dollars that buy less and less.
The biggest flaw in the scheme is throughout the years our representatives used the money intended for SS for other things.
Well on this topic, Bloomy is correct ... it is the world’s largest Ponzi scheme.
The money that comes in instantly goes out to those who were forced to put in previously.
Once the info disappears, the jig is up.
Most likely we will see means testing for social security benefits in the future and the ants will end up paying for the grasshoppers.
It is a ponzi scheme. Not only that, but it made the citizens dependent on government, and was a massive income redistribution scheme. Not only that, but it made the SSN the universal citizen identifier, enabling it to become an index into multiple massive databases on the citizenry.
SS is great! Just ask Ida Mae Fuller. She collected almost 1,000 times as much as she contributed. What could possibly go wrong with such a system?????????
SS is great! Just ask Ida Mae Fuller. She collected almost 1,000 times as much as she contributed. What could possibly go wrong with such a system?????????
At the inception of the program you have to consider the statistics...
1935 SS starts... 1935 the average life expectancy was 61.7 years. Most were not expected to live long enough to collect it at age 65.
Now, life expectancy is about 76 years.
That is why it will implode.
To “correct” it they would have to raise the age to 81.
It will implode also because of demographics; it is labeled a Ponzi scheme because it relies on an increasing population paying in while young. It is also abused (the supplemental social security) on a massive scale.
I don’t know how they keep a straight face admitting they have to raise the eligibility age to a point where most who pay into it won’t collect a penny back.
Coronavirus may be the “fix” for SocSec and Medicare.
You’re right; it seems to target a costly demographic who’ve paid their dues but now would reap the benefits from those decades of payments.
That was my thought when Medicare was to be used in part to fund ObamaCare; the government simply threw non-working retirees under the bus for the younger replacement Americans.
In 1937, the first year of the Ponzi scheme, social security taxes were 1% of income up to $3,000, the median annual income of the time; today that would be about $54,000. We are now taxing incomes up to $118,500 at 12.4%.
Social Security has had to tax 27 times more today than in 1937 to keep up with the Ponzi scheme.
Social Security is the very definition of a Ponzi scheme.
P.S.
This means that for every generation of 20 years, there has been the need for 3 times the number of payees as recipients, which is also what the numbers are today, 3x per generation.
This is the purest definition of a Ponzi scheme where you have to have more suckers tomorrow to pay off the people you are screwing today.
The statistics for blacks in 1935 were even more grim. The average life expectancy was 56 for blacks...this put social security nearly out of reach for them. Less than 2% would live to collect and only for a year or two at most.
The entire program is essentially theft and slavery for wage earners. The time has come to end it.
I understand the desire to end it, especially while we’re being warned that it won’t be there for us in the future while we continue paying for it now. I guess it will remain forever because the government has no idea what to do with anyone who spent all of their money and then becomes too old and/or sick to work to provide for themselves.
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