he Sky =?iso-8859-1?Q?Isn=92t?= Falling =?iso-8859-1?Q?=96It=92s?= a Phony Crisis

[Johnny Holiday/John A. Taube]

The Sky Isn’t Falling –It’s a Phony Crisis

The Washington Spectator, March 15, 2000, featured an article by the
above name and it was written by Mark Weisbrot, University of Michigan,
co-director, Center for Economic and Policy research. My thoughts on it
reflect a background in Technocracy Inc., a scientific, educational
research organization.

A box in the article contained the following statement: “. . . Pete
Peterson, a Wall Street investment banker who served as Secretary of
Commerce during the Nixon administration called it [Social Security] “a
vast Ponzi scheme in which the first people in are big winners and the
vast array of those who join late in the game lose.”

Let’s look at the Ponzi scheme in a little different light than Peterson
described it. If the first group in gets more than they put in, then the
second group makes up the difference, the “short fall.” So each group
makes up for the short fall of the group in front of it. That’s what the
Ponzi scheme is all about. And this is what has been happening with
Social Security all along.

However because our Social Security Ponzi Scheme is a government Ponzi
scheme various factors like inflation, additional people in the scheme,
and money manipulation usually called “cooking the books,” Social
Security has been made to appear solid.

The article went on in this vain: “According to a 1998 poll by Peter
Hart Research, 60 percent of unretired Americans said they expected
Social Security to pay much lower benefits, or no benefits all, when
they retired. The gloom was even deeper, at 72 percent, among people
aged 18 to 34.”

The article discounted this thought. Its reasoning is that the economy
is in wonderful shape. Such being the case, in so many words, the author
contended that the government will make up for the “short falls” that
Social Security Ponzi Scheme constantly creates.

Unless one actually knows what is happening, it’s hard to disagree with
Weisbrot’s contention that everything is rosy and we have nothing to
worry about. However, in that the government can “just pull so many
tricks out of the hat,” the bottom line is that things are not as rosy
as one would like to think.

Mind you, the title of the article is “The Sky Isn’t Falling –It’s a
Phony Crisis” and the author’s thoughts reinforce the validity of the
title. As a member of Technocracy I would suggest that the figures
actually point in an entirely different direction and a rosy feeling is
not warranted.