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No, Elon Musk, Social Security Isn’t a “Ponzi Scheme” (inthesetimes.com)

submitted 10 hours ago by TokenBoomer@lemmy.world to c/progressivepolitics@lemmy.world

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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.

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[–] GrundlButter@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 points 6 hours ago

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.