No, Elon Musk, Social Security Isn’t a “Ponzi Scheme”
Right-wing billionaires have long wanted to shred the safety net. Under Trump, they’re using lies and fears over the deficit to debilitate Social Security.
“Poverty exists not because we cannot feed the poor, but because we cannot satisfy the rich.”
That's a great quote, do you know the origin?
Fascists like Musk use words only as weapons, never to convey information. He doesn't care it's not a ponzi scheme, he just wants to scare idiots into making bad decisions he can profit from.
Those who hate a senior safety net so much have never paid into it, thanks to the 176k tax limit.
Exactly:
A similar reform could be instituted today, say by lifting the cap on earnings that are taxable by Social Security (currently $176,100).
They don’t want to pay into or keep an insurance program that they will never need. To keep it solvent, they would have to pay more into it, and they don’t want to, so they just want to get rid of it.
Social security is spelled "SS", I tought he would be worshipping it instead
I mean it kind of is lol
Edit: don't take this to mean I am against social security or on Musk's side, but it is
Edit: everyone below here is breaking their neck trying to describe social security without using the word scheme lol
I would say it shares a key similarity to a ponzi scheme, but has entirely different goals, methods, and results.
Both of them pay initial "investors" with later investors funds. In a ponzi scheme, this is unknown to the later investors so that they can eventually be left holding the bag. But in social security, this is a known commodity, and the thought is that there will always be more people.
Unfortunately, that last part gets a bit nuanced with population decline and growing needs of the elderly. Either way, it's a good system or a good scheme, but it's definitely not a ponzi scheme. Because just like healthcare, even if we don't fund social security, elderly and disabled people are still going to need care and skip out on their bills when they die. So in the end, we're still paying for it but with extra steps and lawsuits.
It's really not. A ponzi scheme is an investment scam that pretends you can profit while actually your money is being used to scam other people. And the money obviously ends up going to the guy running the scam.
Social security is a type of national insurance. We all pay a bit into the pot which is then distributed to those who need it. Maybe you'll need unemployment for a while, maybe you'll need care when you're older, maybe you're lucky enough that you'll never need anything. But it's a social safety net for all of us.
And yes most of us don't need it right now, so clever morons like Musk can spin it into "why am I paying for this other guy's unemployment?" That is the real scam, to break our willingness to lend a hand to our neighbors and often to ourselves.
A Ponzi scheme is a fraudulent investment that pays existing investors with money from new investors. The scheme operators don't actually invest the money, and the scheme collapses when it can't attract new investors.
If the United States didn't have younger people to pay into the system, new investors, the "ponzi scheme" collapses.
The US government, the scheme operator, doesn't invest the money it receives. Instead, it hands it to previous investors
Now I'm not against a national insurance or something. But we know even with new investors the SS fund is going to run out.
If the government saved the money it was paid and treated it like a real savings account or treated it like insurance.
But the way it is now, it can't run forever. Just like a ponzi scheme
In what way?
However, Social Security, unlike a Ponzi scheme, is not inherently fraudulent, nor does the program promise "investors" artificially high returns with little to no risk, a hallmark of this kind of investment fraud. The report above, for example, shows the administration's transparency about expected returns. source
It’s by definition not unless you consider anything that is paid in to by a group that then pays out to a group a Ponzi scheme. What’s your reasoning?