ECONOMICS: Time for everyone to realize that they were defrauded by Social Security

Friday, July 7, 2023

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2023/06/the_worlds_largest_ponzi_scheme.html

July 2, 2023
The World’s Largest Ponzi Scheme
By David D. Schein 

*** begin quote ***

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. Obviously, if most of the alleged beneficiaries would not live long enough to collect, it was a near-perfect scheme for its operator. The “baby boomer” generation, by expanding the system’s benefits and living longer, is tanking the system.

*** end quote ***

A private individual (Made-off) or a corporation (Enron) would be severely sanctioned but the Gooferment politicians and bureaucrats can retire on their Gooferment pension with complete immunity.

When will “We, The Sheeple” realize that they have been robbed?

Anyone who fails to plan for zero social security in their old age, will find SPAM a delicious luxury.

Pitchforks and torches anyone?

—30—

Leave a Comment » | ECONOMICS | Tagged: , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by reinkefj

Chicago’s pension funds looking more like a collapsing Ponzi scheme | Wirepoints

Thursday, April 25, 2019

A falling population means the city’s massive pension debts are falling on a smaller base of taxpayers. That’s bad news enough.

But another key demographic – the ratio of active government workers to pensioners – is even more concerning.That ratio, which equaled 1.4 actives for every pensioner in 2005, has collapsed to nearly 1.05. And if the trend continues, in just a year or two there will be more pensioners draining money from the pension funds than active workers putting money in.

Source: Chicago’s pension funds looking more like a collapsing Ponzi scheme | Wirepoints

# – # – # – # – #

Can you spell “unfunded liabilities”?

Clearly, this is the USA’s problem writ large!

The current 121T+ national debt and the guesstimated 200T+ in unfunded liabilities is something that our posterity will have to deal with; not just the Chicago / Illinois taxpayers.

— 30 —

Leave a Comment » | ADHOC | Tagged: , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by reinkefj

GOVEROTRAGEOUS: Social Security is a Ponzi scheme

Thursday, April 26, 2018

https://www.lewrockwell.com/2018/04/mark-nestmann/are-you-ready-to-work-until-you-die/

Are You Ready to Work Until You Die?
By Mark Nestmann — April 20, 2018

*** begin quote ***

Social Security suffers from a fundamental problem: it’s a Ponzi scheme, referred to in more polite company as a pay-as-you-go system. Benefits aren’t banked for payment to the persons who earned them. Rather, like a Ponzi scheme, early “investors” have first access to the funds. The so-called Social Security Trust Fund doesn’t exist, at least not in the form most people believe it does. It represents only an entitlement to future benefits, financed by future payments from workers.

Ponzi schemes work as long as the numbers of persons paying into the system and those receiving payouts stay in the same approximate proportion. The proportion of people paying into the Social Security system to beneficiaries is now at a historic low. And in the next 25 to 50 years the ratio will go even lower. In 1960, the worker-to-beneficiary ratio was 5.1:1. In 2005, it was 3.3:1. In 2020, it will be about 2.6:1. It is projected to be 2:1 by 2060.

Unfortunately, even that projection is optimistic because millions fewer workers will be paying into the system than even the most pessimistic scenarios estimate. Researchers at Oxford University estimate that a stunning 47% of US jobs could be eliminated in the next two decades.

Bridging the enormous gap between the benefits promised to retirees and the resources available to meet those promises requires a long-term infusion of trillions of dollars. The Board of Trustees for the Social Security Administration (SSA) publishes an annual report on the sustainability of Social Security benefits. In 2012, the board projected that full benefits could be paid through 2038. In 2016, the board projected Social Security would be insolvent in 2035. Meanwhile, the Congressional Budget Office, a non-partisan federal agency, projects an insolvency date of 2029.

*** end quote ***

That’s the problem with Gooferment. It makes promises that it can’t keep. 

I remember my family discussing many things but Social Security was described as the sacred cow of FDR. My uncles blamed it for breaking up families by permitting old people to move to Florida.

Only later, in college economics, did I realize that Social Security was a “plot” to transfer wealth from poor minority men to rich white women. Conspiracy Theorist supreme! (YACT = Yet Another Conspiracy Theory) It also deprived the poor of their only asset that they accumulated that should have been left to their heirs.

Even later, I heard about Chile who privatized their “social security” system and turned it into a national asset of capital formation. I attributed their success to the fact that the population was illiterate and the designer made it brain dead simple with strict rules and animal logos. While the people may have been illiterate, they certainly understood it was their money.

Where is “We, The Sheeple” DEMANDING “social security” reform. If MetLife did what the Congress has done, then all the executives would be in jail. 

Argh!

# – # – # – # – #

Leave a Comment » | GOVEROTRAGEOUS, YACT | Tagged: , , | Permalink
Posted by reinkefj

MONEY: When does the inflation come?

Monday, March 12, 2012

http://dumpdc.wordpress.com/2012/03/10/flash-editorials-march-3-2012-2/

Flash Editorials March 10, 2012
By Russell D. Longcore

*** begin quote ***

The Nation III: The Federal Reserve now owns more United States Treasury bonds (debt) than China. Think about what a mega-Ponzi scheme this is. The very entity that prints greenback dollars…creating money from paper and ink…prints up a few hundred billion and hands them to the US Treasury to buy debt, thereby propping up the government. It’s the highest form of counterfeiting ever witnessed in human history. The tragic part of this story is that the Fed cannot stop printing and buying. If other nations around the planet want to dump DC debt, the Fed will be forced to buy it so that the bond market does not crash. Get ready for hyperinflation, ladies and gentlemen. It’s coming to a wallet near you.

*** end quote ***

Paper money always fails eventually.

Who gets hurt? The poor, those on fixed incomes, the very young, and the very old.

Who makes out? The elite, the mobile, those with real skills / real capital, and those who “saved” in metals.

So, when?

That’s the 64k$ question!

We have to think it comes with a “tipping point” event (i.e., trouble in the Middle East; OPEC shifts to sell oil for gold; China further “diversifies” out of US debt).

We’re like the old sailors approaching the edge of the earth. Who knows what lies over the horizon?

# – # – # – # – #

Leave a Comment » | MONEY | Tagged: , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by reinkefj