The Great American Ponzi Scheme

Bernard Madoff is expected to plead guilty on Thursday to charges that he defrauded investors in one of the largest ponzi schemes in US history.  This scheme is second only to our current Social Security system scheme (or shall we say Social InSecurity). By pleading guilty, Madoff is not required to tell prosecutors where all the money is.  So, thousands of investors will both not receive the interest promised them...they won't receive the principle that they invested.  Pretty sad...these unfortunate souls are in some cases out their retirement savings.  

Luckily they can still count on the retirement promised by the greatest American Ponzi scheme ever: Social InSecurity!  

Social InSecurity was part of FDR's New Deal and was implemented "supposedly" to eliminate the rising number of older adults living in 

poverty.  (It is worth noting that much of the New Deal was tossed out by the  Supreme Court as unconstitutional, but that Social InSecurity was not because FDR stacked the courts with New Deal judges who would support his "policies.")  The idea that Social InSecurity would pay for the retirement of all Americans is a farce, since the retirement age at conception of the program was greater than the average life expectancy for Americans.  

This means that for every American who actually lived to the age of retirement and started collecting benefits, there were ample workers paying into the system.  As we get closer to a 2:1 

ratio of workers to retirees, we can expect to see Social InSecurity taxes increase and benefits cut-great fun for the whole family :)  (I'd like to send a shout out to FDR for creating unconstitutional programs to treat a temporary ailment, while making that ailment last for over a decade while at the same time creating even worse problems in the future!)

But wait, that is my money that I paid into the system...shouldn't I be able to get the benefit of my investment?  Well...no, you shouldn't according to the courts, no one has any legal right to Social InSecurity.  This means that you can be denied benefits, or worse yet, if the system were to go belly up and Congress can say, "Oh well, thanks for the years you payed in, see you at your new greeter job at Walmart."  

To put this in perspective, if you think that you are going to get a better retirement from investing in Social InSecurity you are like Phyllis Weaver from the greatest 80's movie ever made by Weird Al: UHF.  

Phyllis Weaver has just won a Red Snapper on Wheel of Fish...and this is how the rest of the scene goes down:

Kuni (karate instructor and host of Wheel of Fish): Ahhh, a red snapper.  Mmmmm, very tasty. Okay, Weaver, listen carefully.  You can hold on to your red snapper...[Hiro-San emerges, carrying a table with a box]...or you can go for what's in the box that Hiro-San is bringing down the aisle right now!  What's it gonna be?

[Phyllis Weaver has difficulty in choosing as the audience point to the box]

Phyllis Weaver:  I'll take the box.  The box!

Kuni:  You took the box?  Let's see what's in the box!

[Hiro-San opens the box; the audience gasps.  There is silence]

Kuni:  Nothing!  Absolutely nothing!  STUPID!  You're so STU-PIIIIIIID!

We are all so STU-PIIIIIIID for thinking that Social InSecurity will provide a quality retirement for us.  Chances are that it will be 

defunct, and you will be living in a spare bedroom at your oldest daughter's house.  That's because we are following the crowd in giving our very tasty red snapper to the Government for what is inside the box...you know the rest!  

Also, we allowed ourselves to be lulled into the entitlement mentality that everyone has the right to idle away the golden years sitting on some beach somewhere...or in some rocking chair in a living room in Sun City, AZ.  

So, it looks like we were all duped into believing in a system that's a sham...but wait, messiah was just elected president!  He and only he can fix Social InSecurity, provide universal healthcare, magically create universal education from birth through college, and save the world from global warming!  On second thought, he has the substance and experience that is found inside Hiro-San's box: NOTHING!!!!  He represents the worst of the entitlement movement which would give each American the "right" to claim financial support from every other American.  

How did we get to this point?  The thought used to be that parents work hard to provide more for their children than they had growing up.  Now, in the twisted Bizzaro World, parents are claiming the future earnings of their children so they can sustain their own standard of living. In Bizzaro World we recently passed the "American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009." In the real world, this is known as the "American Robbing from our Kids While Calling it a Reinvestment Act of 2009 Which is Soon to be Followed by a Similar Act of Stealing from our Kids Act of 2010."  So, in honor of such acts, I propose that for the next few years at each child's birthday, we give little Johnny or Jane their own Hiro-San's box of nothing, and buy ourselves a new pair of leather shoes or something else "we deserve."

Oh yeah!  Let's do something about Social InSecurity too before we get left out in the cold by the greatest ponzi scheme in American history.

Possible solutions: personal retirement savings (although this doesn't look too attractive right now with the way the markets are responding to Obama's financial moves), families taking care of their elders, charitable organizations which assist the elderly, or working till you die (FDR did).