Posted on 08/29/2011 6:27:21 PM PDT by Kaslin
Retirement: When Gov. Rick Perry called Social Security a "Ponzi scheme" and a "monstrous lie," the usual suspects complained about his irresponsible rhetoric. But why should Perry soft pedal a hard truth?
When asked about Social Security at a presidential campaign stop in Iowa this weekend, Perry said: "It is a Ponzi scheme for these young people. The idea that they're working and paying into Social Security today, that the current program is going to be there for them, is a lie. It is a monstrous lie on this generation."
You could almost hear the left's collective jaws dropping. How could anyone say this about their most-beloved New Deal program, which has rescued millions of seniors from poverty and let millions more live dignified middle-class lives?
But Perry is right. As Nobel Prize winning economist Milton Friedman once put it, Social Security is "the biggest Ponzi scheme on Earth."
In a classic Ponzi scheme, the first investors get big returns, paid for entirely by new ones. But eventually, you run out of enough new investors and the scheme collapses.
Social Security has operated in basically the same way. The first retirees got huge "returns" from their Social Security tax dollars, but those returns have dwindled with each successive generation as the ratio of workers to retirees inevitably dropped.
(Excerpt) Read more at investors.com ...
milton friedman how we miss you!
My wife and I use our S/S earnings for gambling trips. So basically we are putting the money to work. Lot’s of change girls and drink servers have us to thank for their paychecks. We’re doing our part for the economy! I don’t think everyone can say that.
He’s right.
What is a Ponzi scheme?
A Ponzi scheme is an investment fraud that involves the payment of purported returns to existing investors from funds contributed by new investors. Ponzi scheme organizers often solicit new investors by promising to invest funds in opportunities claimed to generate high returns with little or no risk. In many Ponzi schemes, the fraudsters focus on attracting new money to make promised payments to earlier-stage investors and to use for personal expenses, instead of engaging in any legitimate investment activity.
Why do Ponzi schemes collapse?
With little or no legitimate earnings, the schemes require a consistent flow of money from new investors to continue. Ponzi schemes tend to collapse when it becomes difficult to recruit new investors or when a large number of investors ask to cash out.
Thank you for pointing out where my SS contributions are going and why the system needs to be reformed NOW. How about this - quit your trips to Vegas and give me MY tax dollars back!
Much of what I write on FR is satire. While we do receive SS, most goes for groceries. But there are MANY seniors who gamble at Snoqualamie everyday.
We all know its a ponzie, I thought this was an article about Obamas use of a SSN that He could never have received.
Maybe next time
It didn’t stop him from raiding the lock-box though did it? Friedman was right there with the rest to assure Americans that the money the govt was “borrowing” would be put back WITH interest. Funny thing though once opened it became much easier to take than pay back; for over 50 yrs. Now as we approach retirement age we find that those people who stole the money don’t have the courage to state straight out that -for 50 yrs they’ve been using SS money to pay for lots of things so they didn’t have to raise taxes; where as, had I have been able to put my money to work, it would be worth well over 2 million in today’s dollars. That’s where it becomes a ponzi scheme, the investors (me for 1) are going to get hosed while the perpetrators will spend the rest of their years playing golf 4 days a week.
Anyone who wants to argue “I paid in so I should collect my benefits” needs to read the FACTS in this editorial. Not the sentiment or feelings or emotional reaction. The facts. The facts are that this is a Ponzi Scheme. Early generations got a huge windfall—700% through the early 60s and 180% through the 80s. The people who got those benefits are D-E-A-D. E-V-E-R-Y-O-N-E who is alive today is not going to get their money back. Those are the FACTS. Bitching and screaming won’t change them. And demanding your grandkids pay 50% of their income in tax so seniors can get what they were “promised” is obscene.
We can't do that to the younger generation?
Does anyone in that crowd have a brain?
What do they think this government did to their economy, when government bailed out big biz and Wall Street the tune of MULTIPLE TRILLIONS?
How is it possible Social Security is now broke, but corrupt bloated government continues to subsidies tens of millions of illegal aliens on the backs of the tax payers??
How is all this possible when the government announces their too broke to pay the tax payer SS from what they seized from their pay checks during the course of their work histories??
Government forces the U.S. tax payers to subsidize half of Mexico, bails out big biz and Wall Street, then tells the Americans, tough luck, there is nothing left for you?
Is everyone asleep??
I graduated high school in 1984, and was told then that social security wouldn’t be there for my retirement. I am about 25 years away from my retirement. I figure I’ll retire at 70. So between now and my retirement social security will collapse. So if Perry is right, and today’s college kids want have it when they retire then it would be another 25 years on top of mine. So between 2035, and 2060 we will see the end of social security. Wait, listen to this. Early in W. Bush’s presidency they put forth a plan that would shore up social security for another forty years. President Bush guaranteed that it would now be solid through 2042, and maybe even further. It seems to fall right within the time frame that they originally told me when I was in High school. Why didn’t I listen back then. I was just young, and to dumb to understand.
Here in my city we have Somalis here in the USA less than a year and collecting SSI. Since it's a federal program I doubt it's not just happening in my city.
How do we know Perry didn’t hear Rush say the exact same thing (like I did many times), and then fit it into his campaign platform just to get votes?
Perry knows the political winds have shifted hard right. The hard question is what will Perry do when they blow to the left?
I appreciate the comments about waste and spending on illegals but if you think stopping that will pay for benefits at current levels, you are fooling yourself. Social Security and Medicare spending, if not stopped, will double the budget. You could cut out every penny spent on illegals and “Welfare queens” and you would still have to jack up taxes several trillion dollars a year to keep benefits at current levels.
OK....Great....Gov. Perry says that Social Security is a Ponzi Scheme. Now let’s HEAR A PLAN TO FIX IT! We want SUBSTANCE. Enough soundbites and platitudes.
I think Happy Rain has a valid point. The Obama brats and their ilk are the ones who are going to make it or break it. They were the unthinking factor that pushed the Food Stamp President into office. From my observation and impression of the under 40 group, it will take a crisis of major proportion for them to figure out that the progressive/socialist road is a loser. I just don’t know how long they will be kept on the Democratic plantation before they finally realize what slavery is really about ( and that is black, white and hispanic slavery).
Where your money went. Read and weep.
http://www.socialsecurity.gov/OACT/ProgData/fundFAQ.html#n4
What they said in 1964 (before they looted the system)..
http://www.ssa.gov/history/ssa/usa1964-2.html
Self-Supporting
“The program is designed so that contributions plus interest on the investments of the social security trust funds will be sufficient to meet all of the costs of benefits and administration, now and into the indefinite future—without any subsidy from the general funds of the Government. Both the Congress and the Executive Branch, regardless of political party in power, have scrupulously provided in advance for full financing of all liberalizations in the program.”
Assuming KB is legit and contributed to his SS account, the money KB gets from SS is his money.
Social Security, was never intended initially to be funded by succeeding generations. It was, in effect, supposed to be a government mandated personal savings account.
As government winks and nods, they've choked off our medical services, hospitals, welfare, social service, food stamps, jails, have drivin down the wages of entire industries, while killing and injuring hundreds of thousands of Americans in the process.
It's costing Americans hundreds of billions, all on the backs of the tax payers as we watch or system being gang raped by tens of millions of illegal aliens...
All this while Government forces American citizens to pay for this country killing invasion...Government then turns around, and forces the tax payer to bail out big biz and Wall Street to the tune of *TRILLIONS*.
The same government, who looted Social Security, and who is all but strafing American citizens, turns around and tells the American tax payers, "Sorry, but there is little or no more money for you!
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