"Imagine that someone comes to you with a new plan to save for your retirement. They take your money, but they spend it. Then, they find new investors. They take money from those new investors and give it to you, then go looking for still more investors so that they can give their money to the people whose money they gave to you. That is exactly what Charles Ponzi did in 1916 with the original Ponzi scheme. And that pretty well describes what Social Security does today.
Unlike Charles Ponzi's original Ponzi scheme, Social Security will never go broke as long as the government can force people to pay more taxes and accept fewer benefits. But does that make Social Security better than a Ponzi scheme - or worse?"
2. Columnist Charles Krauthammer "Social Security is a Ponzi Scheme – And It Should Be Fixed":
"Of course it's a Ponzi scheme. So what? It's also the most vital, humane and fixable of all social programs. The question for the candidates is: Forget Ponzi – are you going to fix Social Security?"
Update:
3. Dean Kalahar at Real Clear Markets, "Social Security's Truth Is Coming Our Way":
"In simple terms the FICA program is a pyramid or Ponzi scheme. In the fraud, people on the top of the pyramid collect as long as they can get others below them to pay in. Now as the baby boom retires, the takers outstrip the payers. And like all Ponzi schemes, this is when the system will collapse like a house of cards and take with it the American economy.
The day of reckoning is here. Not even the all powerful OZ can spend other people's money, write an IOU to himself, and then on some future day expect to use those IOUs to fund the Emerald City. It's time to pull back the curtains and admit "the emperor has no clothes."
Update:
3. Dean Kalahar at Real Clear Markets, "Social Security's Truth Is Coming Our Way":
"In simple terms the FICA program is a pyramid or Ponzi scheme. In the fraud, people on the top of the pyramid collect as long as they can get others below them to pay in. Now as the baby boom retires, the takers outstrip the payers. And like all Ponzi schemes, this is when the system will collapse like a house of cards and take with it the American economy.
The day of reckoning is here. Not even the all powerful OZ can spend other people's money, write an IOU to himself, and then on some future day expect to use those IOUs to fund the Emerald City. It's time to pull back the curtains and admit "the emperor has no clothes."
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