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32%  
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Posts by calfcreek

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  • Mandatory Ponzi Schemes

    09/18/2011 6:28:56 AM PDT · 27 of 28
    calfcreek to DB

    True. Also, insurance co.’s take your premiums and invest them to make a profit. Then your claim is paid from proceeds and premiums are set according to profit motive. With SS, the ‘premiums’ are spent, and when your claim is put in, they take money from other taxes and pay it. That’s part of why we’re broke. Govt’ is always the most inefficient way to do anything like this. We are bankrupting our grandchildren with inefficient programs like this, whether you think they are worthy or not.

  • Mandatory Ponzi Schemes

    09/17/2011 6:33:47 PM PDT · 24 of 28
    calfcreek to All
    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