The inmates are running the asylum: eight ideas to permanently break Social Security
When I saw this headline, 8 Possible Social Security Benefit Changes, I was naively hopeful that fiscal responsibilty had stealthily infiltrated its way into D.C.
Sadly, I couldn't have been more wrong. The article gives eight possible "improvements" to the program including:
- Guaranteeing a minimum benefit
- Reducing work requirements for eligibility
- Supplementing benefits for low-income single workers
- Increasing survivor benefits and
- Providing longevity insurance
Sorry to be such a wet blanket, but since it's common knowledge that Social Security is on a certain trajectory towards bankruptcy, shouldn't we be looking at how to make good on the existing promises rather than promising even more?
Related (courtesy of Wikipedia):
A Ponzi scheme is a fraudulent investment operation that pays returns to separate investors from their own money or money paid by subsequent investors, rather than from any actual profit earned. The Ponzi scheme usually entices new investors by offering returns other investments cannot guarantee, in the form of short-term returns that are either abnormally high or unusually consistent. The perpetuation of the returns that a Ponzi scheme advertises and pays requires an ever-increasing flow of money from investors to keep the scheme going... Knowingly entering a Ponzi scheme, even at the last round of the scheme, can be rational economically if government bails out those participating in the Ponzi scheme. If governments use newly created currency to bail out the scheme victims, the newly printed currency will devalue the rest of the currency in circulation, meaning all holders of that currency will suffer inflation to the currency. However, Ponzi schemes cannot last forever.
"He deprives the leaders of the earth of their wisdom, he sends them wandering through a trackless waste. They grope in darkness with no light. He makes them stagger like drunkards."
-- Job 12:24-25
