social security

fraud

pension

identity theft

is a ponzi scheme which works only if tomorrow's young are numerous enough to be able to keep on paying for tomorrows old people as today's youth are who are paying for today's old.

The only reason there is a crisis about Social Security in the US and pensions in Europe and Japan is that you cannot maintain a 'Ponzi' scheme indefinitely. We have collected from today's young to pay today's old and counted on tomorrow's young to keep doing so. That was a fine scheme as long as the number of young people was rising faster than old people. When that ratio comes to an end, such a system also has to end. Milton Friedman

is anti-freedom because it is not the business of government to tell people what fraction of their incomes they should devote to providing for their own or someone else's old age.

I have long been a critic of Social Security, basically because I believe that it is not the business of government to tell people what fraction of their incomes they should devote to providing for their own or someone else's old age. Milton Friedman

is essentially the idea that instead of supporting one's own parents out of love and duty (such that family bonds are strengthened), one instead supports someone else's parents out of compulsion and fear (thus weakening family bonds).

Consider Social Security. The young have always contributed to the support of the old. Earlier, the young helped their own parents out of a sense of love and duty. They now contribute to the support of someone else's parents out of compulsion and fear. The voluntary transfers strengthened the bonds of the family... the compulsory transfers weaken those bonds. Milton Friedman

is problematic because older people did not have an incentive to save so the savings rate actually went down after Social Security because you may as well spend your money somebody else gonna pay for you and you're old.

it is so one problem is that older people did not have an incentive to save so the savings rate actually went down after Social Security because you may as well spend your money somebody else gonna pay for you and you're old

is problematic because where formerly people would have to invest in children to take care of them when they are old, now the they could trust that the government would take care of them.

second thing that happened is people stopped having kids as much it actually had a market impact Jonathan be last week least dinner is a very good book about this there's a it actually had a market impact on birth rates because one of the reasons to have a kid not to be cynical about this but it's true is that historically when you get old who takes care of you your kids right I mean that was the net cost the net cost was that you were going to spend an enormous amount of money educating your children bringing them up keeping them safe and then when you got old you weren't gonna have to worry about it because little Billy was gonna take care of you now Social Security takes care of you did you even have to have kids and that's what's created this enormous bulge in the old population in the United States and very little on the in on the young side of the population in the United States and

is problematic because as a society we tend to abdicate to government what government is willing to take over we have been taken in by the immoral notion that the government is going to take care of all the old people so we don't have to worry about it as a society... social fabric doesn't matter anymore.

because as a society we tend to abdicate to government what government is willing to take over it's also created this immoral notion that the government's going to take care of all the bold people so we don't have to worry about it as a society social fabric doesn't matter anymore so this is why I'm not in favor of socialism you know and and Social Security is a good example I'm not in favor of it because it has just like every other socialist program it has a set of discrete beneficiaries but to fuse victims and the diffuse victims are much more common than the discrete beneficiaries and they grow over time

is a massive Ponzi scheme in which early participants are paid off with money put up by later ones.

In January of 1996, just a few months after Shapiro's article appeared, Pulitzer Prize'winning Washington Post columnist William Raspberry argues that '[Social Security] is, in important ways, like a massive Ponzi scheme in which early participants are paid off with money put up by later ones.'

is a Ponzi scheme, but a workable one in that the perpetual succession of human generations establishes the conditions for its sustainable.

Jonathan Last has already identified a 1967 Newsweek column by liberal economist and Nobel laureate Paul Samuelson as perhaps the earliest use of the Social Security/Ponzi-scheme comparison in public argument. Samuelson was actually drawing on the Ponzi analogy to defend Social Security. His claim was that the perpetual succession of human generations establishes the conditions for a sustainable Ponzi scheme.

social security, n.Memes

Keep exploring social security→

social security