Soical Security --Not a Ponzi scheme
Franklin Roosevelt once said, "Repetition does not transform a lie into the truth."Of course, that's never stopped anti-Social Security conservatives like Walter Williams ("Pyramid of insecurity," Commentary, Wednesday) from making the same tired "Social Security is a Ponzi scheme" argument in spite of the facts.
Social Security is not a Ponzi scheme. Social Security is a pay-as-you-go insurance program, and it does exactly what it's supposed to do by using benefits paid by today´s workers to pay for today's retirees. This is not the same as an investment scam where victims are told their money is making money.
Conservatives have been claiming for more than 60 years that Social Security will fail just as all Ponzi schemes do. That hasn´t happened because the Ponzi comparison is bogus. The ratio of workers to retirees has changed over time, but unless Congress allows the system to be abolished, there will never be a time when no workers are paying into the system. Adjustments have been made in the past and will be made again to accommodate demographic changes through the decades. None of this is true in a Ponzi scheme.
As for the nonsensical comparison that in 1940, there were 42 workers to each retiree and today it is only three to one, ... of course there were fewer beneficiaries when the program began. In January 1940, the first monthly benefits were paid, so millions of then-retired workers didn't have the opportunity to contribute payroll taxes and thus earn benefits.
Instead, many of those ineligible for benefits in 1940 had to rely on public assistance or their children to survive their retirement years - exactly the grim future the anti-Social Security crowd seems so eager for us to bequeath future generations.
BARBARA KENNELLY
President and CEO of the National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare
Washington
Votes:10
Comments: 0