Yes, it is theft of the US Treasury, pure and simple. DOGE is salivating to get their hands on the Social Security Trust Fund, a fund all US people paid into over the past ~80 years.
Any overage beyond current needs is put into a "trust fund" which is required by law to be kept in US Treasury Bonds, aka loaned to the US Government. For the truly cynical, think about it as years of loaning a bunch of money to your uncle, and around the time that money starts needing to be paid back your uncle starts looking for contract assassins (aka "privatization"). If Social Security can be killed then oh my! Guess all that money owed to it just doesn't need to be paid back.
If the money "borrowed" in that way had been spent in ways that would make providing the services it's for easier and more cost effective that would be one thing, but that's not how it works out because the best ROI for private capital is purchasing politicians and policy.
Sure, in one case the parties are me and the US Department of the Treasury and in the other case it’s the SSA and the US Department of the Treasury, but I don’t really see how this matters.
>Sure, in one case the parties are me and the US Department of the Treasury.
It would be the same situation if the DOT taxed you when the T-bills come due.
Trade 1$ for a treasury today. Tomorrow get taxed $1.1 and paid back with your own money.
It’s the same concept as a trust, but essentially at scale for multiple parties.
SS is literally a ponzi scheme disguised as a social insurance program. Everyone would be much better off if you were forced to invest the same amount of money into a personal 401k and some % of returns was skimmed off to be redistributed to low income earners. At least then we'd all be honest about what the programs goals are and how much money is redistributed.
Try telling this to people whose target retirement year was 2008.
And I'm sure the people relying on 401ks to retire in 2026 are feeling a bit on edge right now.
Would you support such a change?
Because it basically is one.
My point is that its not a scheme and no damn politician is going to take social security away from us. And I and most others disagree with changing it to not be universal
It doesn't matter what you or most others think. The US Govt is being held hostage by like 4 people right now and they don't care what you want.
> new entrants are forced in.
Yes and that makes it materially different from a ponzi scheme.
For the 2nd one, indeed, that is a material difference. Of course, that makes it worse than just a regular ponzi scheme! In the above example, if I somehow read the disclaimer and refuse to participate, the ponzi scheme operator now points a gun at me and forces me!
And of course, this "material difference" only makes a real difference as long as demographics are favorable.
So yeah, it's a thinly-disguised ponzi, combined with forced labor.
Normal social services (from schools to even medicaid) merely transfer money between individuals in the present.
No, in the case of "ponzi scheme", it cannot just mean "plan". Yes that is a dictionary meaning of "scheme" but that's not the one referred to in the phrase. Putting a bit of fine print somewhere in hopes people will miss it is not being transparent, it's also deceptive and manipulative.
"Scheme - make plans, especially in a devious way or with intent to do something illegal or wrong."
This is not true with SSA, as people have been getting social security payments regularly for 90 years. No one is deceived about what SSA is.
Can you point to any literal ponzi scheme that is as transparent as SSA, and has consistently paid back investors for 90 years?
> ~nobody studies the terms of how social security operates before starting to pay into it.
Yes, but upon learning the truth, most people understand its purpose, how it works, and agree with it. And crucially, if they didn't, they could change the law.
> indeed, that is a material difference. Of course, that makes it worse than just a regular ponzi scheme!
Why? Ponzi schemes collapse because they run out of new entrants to the scheme. If it's a societal-wide forced Ponzi scheme they're not going to run out of new entrants, and the pool of participants is larger than just suckers who are fooled by ponzi schemes.
You simply assert, without proof, this is worse. But to me this sounds like so many systems we have like insurance, and capitalism as a whole.
Forcing everyone to participate means everyone has incentive for it to not fall over.
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Let's cut to the chase here. There are more difference between SSA and Ponzi schemes than similarities:
- Ponzi schemes are lies; SSA is transparent
- Ponzi schemes are difficult to maintain for long; SSA has been going 90 years
- Ponzi schemes rely on fooling a small group of gullible people; SSA relies on everyone participating
- Ponzi scheme is illegal; SSA is the law
- Ponzi schemes are the brainchild of conmen; SSA is the brainchild of elected representatives and administered by career civil servants
- Ponzi schemes fail when the law catches up and it's dismantled or runs out new people; SSA has yet to fail and predictions that it will fail in the same way Ponzi schemes fail have yet to be proven.
At some point, these difference have to matter, and they certainly mean SSA is not "literally, definitionally a Ponzi scheme"
2) When I said it's "worse" in the 2nd paragraph I meant morally. It's worse to run a ponzi combined with force than to merely to run a ponzi.
"Ponzi schemes are difficult to maintain for long; SSA has been going 90 years" That is just because you can force people in. If Madoff could point a gun at Bill Gates and force him to keep investing for 50 years, it wouldn't make it not a ponzi.
"Ponzi schemes rely on fooling a small group of gullible people; SSA relies on everyone participating" Nowhere it says the group has to be small, there were huge ponzies. Also there's an unjustified moral contrast here. To treat both sides equally, you'd say "relies on forcing lots of mostly gullible people to participate"
"And crucially, if they didn't, they could change the law" It is specifically structured so that it would be extremely difficult because the previous participants have vested interest, having already paid in but not received benefits. Don't take it from me, FDR himself said “I guess you’re right on the economics. They are politics all the way through. We put those pay roll contributions there so as to give the contributors a legal, moral, and political right to collect their pensions and their unemployment benefits. With those taxes in there, no damn politician can ever scrap my social security program. Those taxes aren’t a matter of economics, they’re straight politics.” I.e. people specifically "buy in" and it would be a political suicide to take their return back - regardless of the fact of how it's internally run.
And in fact, this works with ponzi schemes too - when the giant MMM ponzi collapsed in Russia and the operator was in legal trouble, there were massive protests in his support - because the participants were either gullible enough to assume he would have repaid them if not interrupted, or desperate to let it run a little more so they could get some of the money out. He even had a run in politics iirc.
"Ponzi scheme is illegal; SSA is the law" and "brainchild of elected representatives" I don't even know what to say. So was slavery, so is civil forfeiture, war on drugs, war in Iraq. Speaking of FDR, so were internment camps. In 1850, would defenders of SS be saying "it's totally unlike kidnapping and forced labor, cause kidnapping is illegal and slavery is the law"
"they are not going to run out of new entrants" ... "predictions that it will fail in the same way Ponzi schemes fail have yet to be proven" you cannot prove a negative. They actually have official (iirc), public models that indicate quite clearly when it will run out of money to make previously-promised payments in full without additional forced labor.
How is it nitpicking when the fraud is a crucial element? You’re the one calling them “literally, definitionally” the same, and being a fraud is a key part of the literal definition of a ponzi scheme.
When you say “literally, definitionally”, do you actually mean “figuratively and in a hand waving rhetorical way”?
> It's worse to run a ponzi combined with force than to merely to run a ponzi.
You have yet to prove SSA is a ponzu scheme so you’re jumping the gun saying forcing people into it makes it worse.
If forcing everyone into it is what makes it work, then how is it morally wrong if the outcome is a social safety?
> That is just because you can force people in.
lol right. So it’s exactly the same as a ponzi scheme, except in all the ways that it’s not, and these crucial difference make it operate in ways ponzi schemes don’t. How do you go from there, to them being literally, definitionally the same?
> It is specifically structured so that it would be extremely difficult because the previous participants have vested interest,
They wouldn’t have a vested interest if ssa was a ponzi scheme. You are arguing against yourself now. No one except the people running the ponzu scheme have an interest in it.
What you’re actually saying is that people support ssa and don’t want to change it because it works for them.
If it didn’t work, there would be ore support to change it.
> So was slavery, so is civil forfeiture, war on drugs,
You are changing the subject. You said ssa was “literally, definitionally” a ponzi scheme, but in this crucial way they are different. Does your definition of sameness allow for differences? Mine does not.
These other things you bring up being legal have no bearing on ponzu schemes being illegal, differentiating them from ssa.
> you cannot prove a negative.
Yeah exactly. So you can’t say ssa is the same as a ponzi scheme, because it doesn’t behave like one, it’s not constructed like one, and it hasn’t failed like one.
1) "They wouldn’t have a vested interest if ssa was a ponzi scheme ... people support ssa and don’t want to change" First I actually already gave you a /specific example/ where it did happen for a ponzi scheme, from real life, and people thought it "works for them". Then it's simply incorrect, ponzi scheme works out for a person as long as they get out before the organizers run out of more entrants. So the participants clearly have a vested interest in it running a little longer, at least until the latter becomes impossible.
2) On "prove a negative" => "hasn't failed like one" - you twisted my words and ignored the rest of the argument. There's a study by non other than Social Security Trustees that tells you when Social Security will stop being able to make promised payments. So yeah, it's already projected to partially fail (although normally someone is delinquent on debt whether they stop paying completely or partially). Of course secondarily it's also nonsense, by that criteria Madoff's only became a ponzi when it failed, not before. Failing now or later is immaterial
Also, you yourself offered a "one is legal, one is not" argument, but when I try to explore the implications that show the argument is at best vacuous and at most can justify anything ever done by a government ("in 1850, kidnapping and forced labor are illegal, but slavery is legal, so taking someone 'eligible' into slavery is not literally like kidnapping and forced labor") you claim I'm changing the subject.
Viewing the previous thread without assuming argument in good faith, I'd actually like to retract even what I conceded about fraud/lies.
The distinguishing feature of "ponzi scheme" is not "scheme", it's "ponzi". Hence when people shorten it they typically leave out scheme, not ponzi. The distinguishing characteristic they want to indicate, is that the new entrants are paying the returns promised to the previous entrants. In that way, social security is internally constructed exactly like a ponzi. That is what I meant originally.
Obviously, nobody would invest in such a product. So, in case of an illegal ponzi, participants are duped into joining. In case of a legalized ponzi, participants are forced to join (and/or do it by default without understanding, as one does with most govt coercion). The participant acquisition method is secondary to the internal construction. And, while that is the only argument that I see where you can claim "see, not /literally/ a ponzi scheme!", if anything use of force makes it morally worse.
For lack of better terms we can call it "ponzi racket", where racket can be fraud OR coercion; or just a "ponzi".
Everything else - vested interest vs works for them, legal vs illegal, failed already/projected to fail, etc. - is ancillary and/or vacuous and/or not different between them.
EDIT: Oh and claiming it's moral to force people to join because it creates social safety is I think (again uncharitably) your real argument; but is a separate argument I don't want to even start. Whether it even works long term, whether forced charity is moral high-level, whether it cannot be done without force, whether it can be done with force but differently (why help old people via a ponzi? just help poor people regardless of age via normal transfers!), whether it's good for society to prefer old people to e.g. children, etc.. But you are conflating "ends justify the means" argument (that can be valid) with "means are actually not the means you say they are!" because nothing bad can apparently be said about the means as long as ends are good.
They are doing this illegally, these are crimes. Stop propagandizing in support of them.
And its also not really my point. You could consider tax cuts on the rich irrelevant since the money was going directly to them anyway.
In other words: welfare is only considered trash if you're poor.
Exactly, why pay taxes at all? We can just print the money. /s