Dear 22 Year Old: Concerning your economic Future

Re:Dear 22 Year Old: Concerning your economic Future by ataggart on Wednesday October 13, 2010 @03:32AM (#1786426)

You're being overly narrow in your definition of a ponzi scheme. It's simply a scheme whereby, for an individual, the amount of money they receive will exceed the money they spend only so long as the ratio of new members to old members exceeds one. It's not a real investment as there is no productivity increase occurring; it's just an accounting game.

And that's precisely how Social Security operates, and precisely why it will run into problems.

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Re:Dear 22 Year Old: Concerning your economic Future by jojopotato on Wednesday October 13, 2010 @01:45PM (#1788097)

You're right, I am probably being to literal in my definition of a ponzi scheme.

I definitely agree that Social Security is going to go through growing pains as the population demographics change and benefits won't be the exact same as the previous generation, but I feel like people use the term "ponzi scheme" to smear the whole idea of Social Security rather than articulating why we shouldn't have it.

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Re:Dear 22 Year Old: Concerning your economic Future by ataggart on Wednesday October 13, 2010 @03:36PM (#1788541)

Given that the structure of Social Security does conform to a ponzi scheme, it's a smear only insofar as ponzi schemes are "bad".

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