The World’s Largest Ponzi Scheme: Unlike Bernie Madoff, the people behind this won’t be arrested

American Thinker ^ | 07/02/2023 | David D. Schein

[SeekAndFind]

“Ponzi Scheme” is a term that was coined about 100 years ago. It was named after an Italian immigrant, Charles Ponzi, who realized he could get investors by promising large returns for undefined, high-yield investments. His endeavor needed to make just enough money to keep attracting new investors, whose money, after Ponzi’s cut, was used to pay some of the earlier investors. In our modern day, Bernie Madoff’s Ponzi scheme resulted in losses in the billions of dollars when the stock market tanked during the Great Recession.

Selling the Deal

Americans are just beginning to see the tip of the iceberg of their own trillion-dollar Ponzi scheme, Social Security (“SSA”). Signed into law in 1935 by FDR during the heart of the Great Depression, workers were told that Social Security was intended to provide a safety net parallel to retirement systems that existed in Europe. The retirement age was set at 65. Americans were required to pay into the fund through payroll deductions their employers collected. Most Americans were “covered” by the system, and it was later expanded to cover household workers and others who were excluded initially. The system is structured to be a regressive income tax covering most workers’ wages up to $160,200 per year, with no limit on the parallel Medicare withholding.

When FDR was garnering praise for helping the working class, the average life expectancy in the United States was only 60.7 years. So, while most workers would pay into the system, few would live long enough to collect benefits.

In contrast, by 2020, the average American life expectancy had surged to 78.81 years. This is just one of the problems with the SSA’s structure that has brought America to the current financial cliff.

[SeekAndFind]

Image: The SEC’s illustration of a Ponzi scheme. Public domain.

Under ERISA, Congress mandated that, if a private employer promised a pension, the benefit had to be there when the employee qualified for the payments. However, Congress did not designate the same protection for the largest employee benefit program in American history. Due initially to the limited American life span in the early days of the program, SSA ran at a surplus. Post-WWII, the baby boomers surged into the workforce, and SSA collected more money than needed to pay current benefits.

Then, around 2011, the first boomers hit 65. There is no magic to this formula. Just a decade later, the Social Security Trust Fund is already a patient on life support, and the end is around the corner in 2033. Available to all is the Congressional Budget Office’s “2022 Long-Term Projections for the Social Security.” The shortfall is in the trillions of dollars beyond that date with no turnaround in place. In fact, attentive Americans of all ages should have noted that, during the current National Debt Limit debate, if the government did not raise the limit by June 5, SSA payments would have been stopped.

[wjcsux]

My dad pointed out that Social Security was a giant Ponzi scheme when I was in high school.

[Stosh]

If I recall correctly, a number of decades back Chile (inspired by economists from the “Chicago School”) instituted a public retirement system based on free market principles that at the time was working quite well. Not sure if it’s still in effect, or if it still is viable, but it sure seemed a whole lot more sensible than the scam we’ve been stuck with.

[Leaning Right]

Charles Ponzi was a con man, and a swindler. But he was not a counterfeiter. He could not print money on demand.

However, the federal government can print money on demand. That’s exactly how they will eventually solve all their deficit problems. Sure, that will cause wild hyperinflation.

But that solution is also the easiest solution. So that’s what they will go with.

[Honest Nigerian]

If I recall correctly, .... no such thing as a free lunch.
And if it is some government-controlled or backed thing you have to wonder ... Why?
Free enterprise can do a better job at anything for less money.

[DesertRhino]

Ponzi got a bad rap. He found a loophole in the US postal system where international postal return coupons could be bought dirt cheap in Italy and redeemed in America for full value postal stamps.
The government was mad that he was skinning then alive. He never failed to pay his investors until the government shut him down. He was wide open about what he was doing.

Social security is a con job.

[DesertRhino]

Ponzi got a bad rap. He found a loophole in the US postal system where international postal return coupons could be bought dirt cheap in Italy and redeemed in America for full value postal stamps.
The government was mad that he was skinning then alive. He never failed to pay his investors until the government shut him down. He was wide open about what he was doing.

Social security is a con job.

[DesertRhino]

SS has no excuse to be broke. You take 15% of someone’s income for 45 years, and then bitch about having to give them 1000 to 2000 a month? And on top of that you keep the change when they die? And if they die before that age they keep everything?
If an investment company offered such a product it would literally be criminal.

Every worker pays enough that they should get a pension of 75k a year and pass on a million to their kids.

It isn’t that SS can’t fund it, it is that they steal it, and give it free to foreigners and people who never paid a day. You don’t need magic numbers of workers. That arraignment of lifetime wage confiscation and invest it for 45 years World work if you had 5 workers.

Ponzi was an honest man. DC and SS are unfit to shine his shoes.

[SaveFerris]

I’ll say it again: Obamacare was designed (on purpose) to kill off older Americans.

Witness the “death panels” that Sarah Palin talked about.

Because it doesn’t SAY “death panels” the average American was too stupid and too lazy to figure it out.

I submit, also, COVID-19(84) had similar effects (some survived, of course, but a number of victims were in aging years - AND DEMOCRATS purposely put the sick into nursing homes).

/shiny side out

[SaveFerris]

[about having to give them 1000 to 2000 a month? And on top of that you keep the change when they die? And if they die before that age they keep everything?]

Agreed

[Secret Agent Man]

Yup.

[Secret Agent Man]

The real kicker is that almost everyone in it didn’t personally sign up voluntarily, and they won’t let you leave and stop forcing you to pay in.

The people who actually didnt voluntarily sign up for it should be able to opt out. They never willingly entered into the contract.

[Bikkuri]

"My dad pointed out that Social Security was a giant Ponzi scheme when I was in high school."

Same here.

[ronnie raygun]

and.........the rats found a way to “borrow” the money leave an IOU and never pay it back

[Bikkuri]

Yup..

"Witness the “death panels” that Sarah Palin talked about."
Conspiracy Theory.. until it's not.

[SaveFerris]

[SaveFerris]

[Conspiracy Theory.. until it’s not.]

Exactly

[fruser1]

"SSA payments would have been stopped"

Flat out lie that's echoed every debt ceiling drama. The money acquired through notes, bills, and bonds issued by the Treasury is what would stop and none of that money is used to pay FICA (SS, medicare, disability).

[napscoordinator]

And weirdly nobody rejects the free monthly check. I’m not eligible for 13 years at 67 but I highly doubt I’ll turn it down. There are tons of seniors in my development and not a one that I know of has rejected getting the free check every month.

[CoastWatcher]

What was not mentioned, is LBJ raided the Social Security surplus to fund his ‘Great Society’.

Liberals have been spending like drunken whores ever since.