>You can do that by building up vast stores of wealth and funneling it to people over time, or you can do it by directly taxing current production, but either w

>You can do that by building up vast stores of wealth and funneling it to people over time, or you can do it by directly taxing current production, but either way the effect is to direct resources from people who produce to those who don't. The "vast stores of wealth" approach is "hoard financial assets, and then sell them to current workers" - that is, savings. Note that this includes financial assets such as mortgages and student loans, and "selling them to current workers" includes them paying down the principal. I don't view it as a Ponzi scheme, per se, but there's a very big problem with defined-benefit schemes: if our future society is not productive enough to support the promised benefits, the only choices are to renege or to increase the transfer from future workers. Defined-contribution schemes have the political advantage of automatically reducing benefits when the economy does poorly.