http://www.businessweek.com/the_thread/economicsunbound/archives/2008/12/is_social_secur.html You gotta love the readers posts to the article! I dont know about ponzi but its a pyramid and defianatly ascheme. For me, I hang on to the quotes of our founding fathers and the truly gifted leaders that we now lack:
Declaration of Independence: "But, when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object, evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security." *** James Madison: "I cannot undertake to lay my finger on that article of the Constitution which granted a right to Congress of expending, on the objects of benevolence, the money of their constituents." *** Thomas Jefferson: "We must not let our rulers load us with perpetual debt. We must make our selection between economy and liberty or profusion and servitude. If we run into such debts as that we must be taxed in our meat in our drink, in our necessities and comforts, in our labors and in our amusements, for our callings and our creeds...our people.. must come to labor sixteen hours in the twenty-four, give earnings of fifteen of these to the government for their debts and daily expenses; and the sixteenth being insufficient to afford us bread, we must live.. We have not time to think, no means of calling the mis-managers to account, but be glad to obtain subsistence by hiring ourselves to rivet their chains on the necks of our fellow suffers. Our landholders, too...retaining indeed the title and stewardship of estates called theirs, but held really in trust for the treasury, must...be contented with penury, obscurity and exile.. private fortunes are destroyed by public as well as by private extravagance. This is the tendency of all human governments. A departure from principle becomes a precedent for a second; that second for a third; and so on, till the bulk of society is reduced to mere automatons of misery, to have no sensibilities left but for sinning and suffering... And the fore horse of this frightful team is public debt. Taxation follows that, and in its train wretchedness and oppression." "A wise and frugal government, which shall restrain men from injuring one another, which shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned. This is the sum of good government, and this is necessary to close the circle of our felicity." "We are all doubtless bound to contribute a certain portion of our income to the support of charitable and other useful public institutions. But it is a part of our duty also to apply our contributions in the most effectual way we can to secure this object. The question then is whether this will not be better done by each of us appropriating our whole contribution to the institutions within our reach, under our own eye, and over which we can exercise some useful control? Or would it be better that each should divide the sum he can spare among all the institutions of his State or the United States? Reason and the interest of these institutions themselves, certainly decide in favor of the former practice." "To compel a man to furnish contributions of money for the propagation of opinions which he disbelieves and abhors, is sinful and tyrannical." *** Sir Winston Churchill: "We contend that for a nation to try to tax itself into prosperity is like a man standing in a bucket and trying to lift himself up by the handle." "You don't make the poor richer by making the rich poorer." *** Grover Cleveland: "When more of the people's sustenance is exacted through the form of taxation than is necessary to meet the just obligations of government, such exaction becomes ruthless extortion and a violation of the fundamental principles of a free government." *** Calvin Coolidge: "The collection of taxes which are not absolutely required, which do not beyond reasonable doubt contribute to the public welfare, is only a species of legalized larceny. The wise and correct course to follow in taxation is not to destroy those who have already secured success, but to create conditions under which everyone will have a better chance to be successful." "No matter what anyone may say about making the rich and the corporations pay taxes, in the end they come out of the people who toil." *** Benjamin Franklin: "When the people find they can vote themselves money, that will herald the end of the republic." "... as all history informs us, there has been in every State & Kingdom a constant kind of warfare between the governing & governed: the one striving to obtain more for its support, and the other to pay less. And this has alone occasioned great convulsions, actual civil wars, ending either in dethroning of the Princes, or enslaving of the people. Generally indeed the ruling power carries its point, the revenues of princes constantly increasing, and we see that they are never satisfied, but always in want of more. The more the people are discontented with the oppression of taxes; the greater need the prince has of money to distribute among his partisans and pay the troops that are to suppress all resistance, and enable him to plunder at pleasure. There is scarce a king in a hundred who would not, if he could, follow the example of Pharaoh, get first all the peoples money, then all their lands, and then make them and their children servants for ever ..." "All the property that is necessary to a Man, for the Conservation of the Individual and the Propagation of the Species, is his natural Right, which none can justly deprive him of: But all Property superfluous to such purposes is the Property of the Publick, who, by their Laws, have created it, and who may therefore by other laws dispose of it, whenever the Welfare of the Publick shall demand such Disposition. He that does not like civil Society on these Terms, let him retire and live among Savages. He can have no right to the benefits of Society, who will not pay his Club towards the Support of it." *** Ronald Reagan: "We need true tax reform that will at least make a start toward restoring for our children the American Dream that wealth is denied to no one, that each individual has the right to fly as high as his strength and ability will take him. . . . But we cannot have such reform while our tax policy is engineered by people who view the tax as a means of achieving changes in our social structure." "Government does not tax to get the money it needs; government always finds a need for the money it gets." "Are you entitled to the fruits of your labor or does government have some presumptive right to spend and spend and spend?" "Have we the courage and the will to face up to the immorality and discrimination of the progressive tax, and demand a return to traditional proportionate taxation? ... Today in our country the tax collector's share is 37 cents of every dollar earned. Freedom has never been so fragile, so close to slipping from our grasp." *** -RickG On Tue, Dec 8, 2009 at 7:50 PM, Matt Liotta <mlio...@r337.com> wrote: > > On Dec 8, 2009, at 7:16 PM, Mike Hammett wrote: > > > Exactly. Bernie Madoff went to jail because of his Ponzi scheme, > > why didn't > > FDR for social security? Well, other than the obvious of him dieing. > > > Maybe you don't realize that Madoff fraudulently mislead investors > whereas social security is a government mandate. Of course, this has > been refuted by many others; see... > > http://www.socialsecurity.gov/history/ponzi.htm > > > http://www.fool.com/retirement/general/2009/07/21/is-social-security-a-giant-ponzi-scheme.aspx > > > http://www.businessweek.com/the_thread/economicsunbound/archives/2008/12/is_social_secur.html > > > http://money.cnn.com/2009/01/06/news/economy/social.security.fortune/index.htm > > I challenge you to take a supportable position that can actually move > the healthcare debate forward. Again, I believe it is people like you > that keep legitimate debate from occurring. Shame on you. > > -Matt > > > > -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- > WISPA Wants You! 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