Liberty Maven

In typical hypocritical fashion, the government and media make a huge stink of Bernie Madoff’s Ponzi-style pyramid scheme, but they conveniently fail to recognize or point out the fact that their cherished boondoggle called the Social Security System is exactly the same thing.  Liberty Maven Liberty Hero Walter E. Williams remarks on this hypocrisy in his Washington Times commentary today.  Here’s a snippet:

We have a national Ponzi scheme where Congress collects about $785 billion in Social Security taxes from about 163 million workers to send out $585 billion to 50 million Social Security recipients. Social Security’s trustees tell us the surplus goes into a $2.2 trillion trust fund to meet future obligations. The problem is whatever difference between Social Security taxes and benefits paid out is spent by Congress. What the Treasury Department does is give the Social Security Trust Fund nonmarketable “special issue government securities” that are simply bookkeeping entries or IOUs.

According to Social Security trustee estimates, around 2016 the amount of Social Security benefits paid will exceed taxes collected. That means one of two things, or both, must happen: Congress will raise taxes and/or slash promised Social Security benefits. Each year the situation will worsen since the number of retirees is predicted to increase relative to the number in the work force paying taxes. In 1940, there were 42 workers per retiree, in 1950 there were 16, today there are 3 and in 20 or 30 years there will be 2 or fewer workers per retiree.

Read the whole commentary.