Ponzi was an amateur

Charles Ponzi couldn't hold a candle to the creators of the long con chain-letter pyramid scheme known as Social Security.

Look: If a program requires ever-expanding numbers of new contributors at the bottom to keep the payouts coming to those at the top, it's a pyramid scheme, a Ponzi scheme, a chain-letter, a generational transfer scheme, a welfare program, or any number of other things, but it's not insurance, it's not an investment, it's not a retirement plan, and it's not a bank account. And because 'contributions' (taxes) are mandatory for most people, it's financial rape under color of authority. Got it?

When Social Security collapses, will anyone end up behind bars? Can we exhume FDR and try him for fraud? How about all the other politicians since then who talk about the phantasmagorical Social Security 'trust fund' or 'lock box'? (The only thing there is a pile of IOUs -- more debt.)

Update1

Rick Santelli hands it to Tom Friedman:

http://video.cnbc.com/gallery/?video=3000044440

Via: market-ticker.org

Update2

Here's a great quote from a liberal, Nobel prize-winning economist, acknowledging the Ponzi-ness of Social Security quoted in a book titled Social security: false consciousness and crisis:

The beauty of social insurance is that it is actuarially unsound. Everyone who reaches retirement age is given benefit privileges that far exceed anything he has paid in... A growing nation is the greatest Ponzi scheme ever contrived. And that is a fact, not a paradox.

(Emphasis mine)

So: According to Paul Sameulson, defending Social Security... it is actuarially unsound and retirees receive benefit privileges far in excess of anything they have paid in.

Yup. It's a Ponzi scheme, a pyramid scheme, a generational transfer, it's welfare, or all of them. Get over it.