[Waterluvian]

Thanks so much for sharing this detail.

With regards to "it's like a ponzi scheme". I completely see what you're saying. But shouldn't it look more like a population pyramid? Where, yes, the word pyramid is in the name, but generally a mature nation won't be top-heavy (except for the baby Boomer issue but that's kind of transient, no?)

My sense is that it should work perpetually so long as a nation doesn't see massive population decline and employment remains reasonably consistent. And in years/decades when there are imbalances, the government can step in and prop it up through other means rather than watching a private corporation file bankruptcy.

I feel like maybe we're judging the long-term efficacy of such a system too early. Right now we're dealing with a one-two punch: baby boomers are retiring and people are living longer. But neither of those are going to increase perpetually.

[turc1656]

I agree that "it should work perpetually so long as a nation doesn't see massive population decline and employment remains reasonably consistent".

But the same thing is true for a ponzi scheme, right? The idea is a never-ending growth from which new people pay the existing. The requirement that the US population must continue to grow - not just stagnate and contain the same number of people, but grow, indicates a ponzi-esque scheme to me. There is a finite amount of resources on the planet. Therefore there is a finite number of people that can be living on this planet. But such systems mathematically require that the number of new people constantly goes up over time. This is indicative of an unsustainable system.

If it were altered in a way such that, for example, there was a 1:1 (payers:recipients) relationship (or less) between the number of payers and the number of recipients, than I'd say that's sustainable because it doesn't require growth. Currently we have ~130M payers and 64M recipients, which means there's a roughly 2:1 ratio. On the surface it looks fine because you think hey people work for 40-45 years and then retire for 20 so 2:1 sounds about right. And it is, but only if you can continue to produce that larger base forever.

[lotsofpulp]

Civilization is a ponzi scheme if you step back far enough, but it's not a useful way to model it. For a more accurate understanding of the way Social Security is structured, I would check these links. The second link is to an interview where it's explained in simple english.

https://www.ssa.gov/policy/docs/chartbooks/fast_facts/2019/f...

https://us14.campaign-archive.com/?u=bd0d1b66f832083794c33c9...

I also have not found a source to substantiate the claim that the US government periodically steals money from Social Security.

[turc1656]

See my other comment(s) in this thread. I have acknowledged that was not in fact true after checking further once called out on it.

[lotsofpulp]

Yes, I hadn't seen that yet. Thanks for acknowledging! I learned the same way when I was researching it too.