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> "A Ponzi scheme is unsustainable because the number of potential investors is eventually exhausted." Which is exactly what is happening now with the lopsided
by cloakandswagger 10y ago
> "A Ponzi scheme is unsustainable because the number of potential investors is eventually exhausted."
Which is exactly what is happening now with the lopsided ratio of retirees and new incoming workers.
They seem to have marked the assertion as "False" based off of really semantic technicalities
- Frondo 10y agoThe supply of workers will never be exhausted. The program will be tweaked, as it has been all along, to ensure it remains fully functions. Read up on it, it's a lot more interesting than the "it's going broke!!" stuff makes it out to be.
- soundwave106 10y agoIf there wasn't a fertility decline in the Western world, there wouldn't be a lopsided ratio of retirees to new incoming workers. That future probably wasn't terribly obvious to the politicians who created them (given that most public pension plans were created roughly between World War I and a bit after World War II). In fact, based on some of the literature of the time (eg The Population Bomb -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Population_Bomb https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Population_Bomb -- etc.) I'd say it's more like people were fearing the reverse.
- cmurf 10y agoOh my a short term mismatch in the system; as if we can't make an adjustment. What would privatization of Social Security employ when the stock market crashes, which happens from time to time, to moderate the negative effects. In fact, moderation isn't good enough, it'd have to completely smooth away any negative effect for it to be even remotely tenable. Oh the old people have to move out of their apartment if they can't afford it now? Too bad? http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2016/04/25/millennials-overtake-baby-boomers/ http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2016/04/25/millennials-...