“Mainly” and “mostly” 🤨

It has two sources of funding (taxes being the second) and there isn’t a middle man skimming a cut while paying older participants simply with new participants’ money while claiming their money is invested to generate money to pay them all out. The entire point of a Ponzi scheme is you are pretending there is money being generated that isn’t, you are just using new victims money for as long as possible until the music stops. They literally make up numbers to cover their tracks. It’s a fraudulent enterprise by design.

It is not a Ponzi scheme. It is literally not a Ponzi scheme by definition. You are making up your own rules and definitions because of how it feels to you. Do I think it is flawed and not a great way of handling these funds if you want them to be steady in the longterm? Absolutely. But it is not a Ponzi scheme.

I’m done man.

It can sound like someone’s whistling Dixie if you want to claim that, it doesn’t make it true.

That’s not a fucking Ponzi scheme dude! It’s right there in your own comment!

State pension plans are primarily funded (in order of what comprises the most) by 1) the government 2) investments and 3) employee contributions.

Pay as you go is about employee contributions, which is typically the smallest pot being contributed. I don’t think you know what you’re talking about.

When did I ever say the problem goes away? I am saying it is not a Ponzi scheme. You were saying it is a Ponzi scheme. Don’t move the goalposts here.

This is a fundamental misunderstanding of how these funds work.

The goal is not to pay people with the money from new people paying into the pot. They invest the money and then the pot grows and that money is used to pay out. When the pot is not growing enough - whether because investments aren’t doing well enough, or you designed a you designed an bad system where people can withdraw from it for too long, or any other many possible issues - then yes you functionally end up dipping into the money given by new people, but this is not how it was designed to be used.

You are acting like this is a one-to-one system where you just put money in, then you get money out later, and all of the money given out is 100% the money that people put in in the first place with no intention of growing that money or finding a sustainable way of disseminating it long-term.

Mismanagement/poorly built systems are not the same as Ponzi schemes. Unless you think, I don’t know, US Social Security is also a Ponzi scheme?

That’s still not a Ponzi scheme even if it isn’t sustainable.

Seconded on the annoying giant text.