Bitcoin Ponzi scheme

Funny, I also built something like this in December.

http://pyramidofcoins.com/

The difference between Social Security and an annuity is that Social Security charges too little and promises payouts of too much. It cannot sustain the payouts which are promised in 2014 from revenues available to it in 2014 or the investment returns reasonably possible as a result of those revenues (and its accumulated capital). It must therefore increase the amount of revenues it receives, by a) increasing the SS tax rate and b) increasing the number of people who pay into SS until c) it inevitably defaults on promises to some portion of beneficiaries, for example by adopting e.g. means testing and retroactively stating that people born after a certain day will get the payout they've been promised their entire lives iff they have less income/wealth than $INSERT_CUTOFF and, if they exceed that, they'll receive $CONSOLATION_PRIZE_FORMULA instead.

Did you know that Social Security taxes were once 2.25% of income? Before they were 4.5%? Before they were 6.9%? Before they were 8.1%? Before they were 15.3%? That's where we are in 2014.

To be fair, while Social Security is clearly not an annuity, as of 2014 it isn't yet in default of its obligations. There's some dispute about what year that will inevitably happen. It will not be described as a default when it does, but rather tweaking a few formulas to protect America's most vulnerable citizens.

Edit: Social Security also has some "constructive default" options which are available outside of the program, because it is coextensive with the taxing power of the federal government. For example, SS benefits were once untaxed but are now taxed. There exist plausible ways by which every dollar promised of SS benefits can be "paid" but in which many get immediately recaptured by the government, which avoids formally adjusting the terms of the promise but which is indistinguishable from default in its impact on e.g. your family's budgeting process in 2070.

Another option is inflating away the insolvency. Japan will probably do this. It will pay out every yen of the promised monthly 200,000 yen due to pensioners, but pay it with yen which buy half as many apples as they did back when the pensioners were working.

Nobody is denying that, but you are misunderstanding his argument.

There is a difference between a ponzi scheme collapsing from lack of new "suckers" vs pulling the plug on the site. I think what he is trying to say is that there were plenty of suckers left, and the loss now feels artificial.

Somebody is going to pay though. I'm sure (I hope in this community) everyone knows that.

whatever happened to ethics and demonstrating problems without victimising people?

its not big or clever. :/

once again disappointed in the community...

The similarity that Social Security has to a Ponzi scheme is that they are both ultimately zero-sum games. The difference is that the government can run a zero-sum game forever, because it's the government.

You have a standard lie in your screed above, which when revealed demonstrates exactly how the zero-sum game will shift during our lifetimes to keep Social Security solvent forever and ever, amen. You claim that Social Security has no investments. This is a blatant lie. Social Security has been running a surplus for all of my life, and investing the surplus in trillions and trillions of US government debt, partially because it's the safest investment in the world and probably mostly because it's really convenient for the government.

Ah-ha, I'm sure you're going to say. When the one hand cashes in the T-bills, the other hand will have to pick our pockets to pay for it with more taxation, you're going to say.

Yes. But which pockets the government picks to pay off our internal obligations is extremely important.

Social Security, you see, is funded by a more-or-less flat tax on the first $XYZ,000 of workers incomes. It is basically the most regressive a tax can be, short of it being a fixed dollar amount regardless of income, which usually only happens for licensing fees, but that's another story. On the other hand, the mature T-bills are going to be paid for out of the general fund, the taxation structure for which is honestly one of the more progressive tax bases in the world.

When you combine this with the most probable fixes for Social Security -- dropping the income cap on the tax -- the future of Social Security is quite clear. Social Security is going to quietly shift from intergenerational wealth transfers to intragenerational wealth transfers. Some people in a generation, the poorest, will get back more money from Social Security than they pay in. Some people in a generation, the richest, will pay in more money than they get back.

The difference between Social Security and a Ponzi scheme is that, in a Ponzi scheme, if every group did not statistically get back more than they paid in, they would stop paying into it. Social Security, being involuntary, can collect 15% of $250,000 from a man while telling him upfront and outright he's only getting back 15% of $150,000 after he retires. At this point, a Ponzi scheme would collapse. Social Security will just putter along happily, running exactly as it should.

The difference between a Ponzi scheme and Social Security is that a Ponzi scheme is an investment, while Social Security is an insurance. As an insurance, a statistical loss is expected, but it provides a guarantee, in this case that when you are old you will never be destitute, living on the street eating catfood, or cats and rats when you can catch them.