On Thu, Mar 10, 2011 at 12:10 PM, Bill Lear <[email protected]> wrote: > I'm continuing to try to understand how to articulate the difference > between a Ponzi scheme and Social Security. My basic conclusion is > that a Ponzi scheme has a criminal who steals money, whereas Social > Security does not. Secondarily, Ponzi schemes are supposed to depend > on a geometrically increasing progression of victims, whereas Social > Security does not.
Your second point is the most important I think. If there is no geometric progression of participants, then by definition it is not a Ponzi. And unless you are a Malthusian, Soc Sec is only projected to experience an increase in beneficiaries due to a one-time freak demographic event - the post-WW2 population boom in the US. re: Madoff, I think there are a lot of details that we still do not know about how his scheme worked. Btw there is a prior PEN-L thread on this very topic: http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/msg17110.html -raghu. _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
