OregonTrails
Member
No actual money set aside? Is "money set aside" in the case of your bond investments? How about your gold? What about your BANK ACCOUNT for chrisake!
winner and still undefeated: increasing the minimum wage
- Thread starter UncleBuck
- Start date
OregonTrails
Member
"Ponzi"?? REALLY?? No.
The special-issue Treasury bonds in that Trust Fund carry with them real obligations of the U.S. Treasury to hand over cash for Social Security to pay its beneficiaries. Contrast that with a typical Ponzi scheme, where the scheme's assets are completely phantom, and you can see that those real investments make Social Security farsuperior to a Ponzi scheme.
Second, Social Security's accounting is about as honest as any accounting based on projections can be. Its trustees are actively telling you that it is running out of money. On top of that, Social Security's website explicitly tells you that the program likely won't be enough to cover your costs in retirement. Social Security tells you what's going on, warts and all, and itwants you to invest around its shortcomings. A Ponzi scheme, on the other hand, will lie through its teeth in its accounting and projections to try to encourage you to "invest" more in it.
Third, Social Security is a mandatory program for nearly all U.S.-based wage-earners. The money coming in to pay benefits will keep coming in unless there's a tremendous shift in the law. When Ponzi schemes collapse, they often collapse quickly after they're uncovered as scams, because people stop contributing new money.
Fourth and finally, Social Security has a multidecade history of being patched up by Congress. When it started, Social Security's tax rate was 2% (half paid by you, half paid by your employer), while today it's 12.4%. Similarly, Social Security taxes were originally levied on your first $3,000 of income, while today's taxes are taken out of your first $117,000. That's a substantially higher tax rate on twice the income base after adjusting for inflation. Additionally, since the mid-1980s, your Social Security benefits themselves can be taxed if your total income level is high enough, with a huge chunk of that tax money helping to shore up the system.
Those Congressional patches have already been applied to bolster Social Security, and chances are good that Congress will come up with other sorts of patches to keep the program running in the future. Having Congress behind it gives Social Security a far better foundation than any Ponzi scheme in history.
I stopped reading right here because you made a grave error. Ponzi schemes don't have phantom money, they have real money and can make investors rich as long as enough people are putting money in so that some of the people can be paid to keep the scheme going.
Gold is a currency. It is still, by all evidence, a premier currency. No fiat currency, including the dollar, can match it.
AG
OregonTrails
Member
Your arguments are still non-existent. SS is no more a ponzi scheme than is any insurance product. You pour your money into a term life insurance policy and after 20 years you terminate it. Where is your money? Gone.
At least SS provides for delivery of your benefits to you even if you stop working at age 50, and to your spouse or children if you die.
BTW, Charles Ponzi paid early investors with money from new investors. No money was reserved.
At least SS provides for delivery of your benefits to you even if you stop working at age 50, and to your spouse or children if you die.
BTW, Charles Ponzi paid early investors with money from new investors. No money was reserved.
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ChesusRice
Well-Known Member
Gold has no value.
UncleBuck
Well-Known Member
worth less than two thirds of what it was only two years ago.
remind me who called that bubble and who denied it again?
JA JA!
I never said SS was a ponzi scheme, I said it operates like one. Which it does, it relies on current workers deposits to fund all the retirees.
SS doesn't provide benefits to people when they turn 50, the min age to collect is 62.
You can't win an argument with pretend facts.
That's why yesterday I purchased another monster box of Silver Eagles and 10 gold eagles. $22,000.worth less than two thirds of what it was only two years ago.
remind me who called that bubble and who denied it again?
JA JA!
You won't buy any, and you won't have any when the price goes back up either.
But I will.
ElfoodStampo
Well-Known Member
Sure hope that minimum wage can cover 3.50 gas, smaller candy bars that cost 1.70 or value meals that cost 7.00 or spending 300.00 at the grocery store and get like 6 bags..
They have to increase minimum wage or people would starve and learn about fiat currency's inevitable death spiral of inflation.
They have to increase minimum wage or people would starve and learn about fiat currency's inevitable death spiral of inflation.
OregonTrails
Member
I didn't say SS provides benefits to people when they turn 50.
You can't win an argument by fantasizing the conversation you would like to have.
You can't win an argument by fantasizing the conversation you would like to have.
UncleBuck
Well-Known Member
ever get to the bottom of the sandy hook conspiracy?
ElfoodStampo
Well-Known Member
Yea, it was fake.
OregonTrails
Member
So, if you cannot understand plain words correctly, your argument is without validity. And apparently you remain unable to figure out exactly what I said.
UncleBuck
Well-Known Member
You can't write plain words if you think that says something else.
The last time I bought gold it cost me $850 an ounce, so whatever you are referring to, its BS.
OregonTrails
Member
And you don't DARE quote me because your claim would fall apart. I suspect your inability to understand words is the problem behind your choice of political affiliation.