Why Do So Many Government Programs Fail?

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sedonaman said:
The point is that it is different things to different people, depending on their perception of what they were told.
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By “it” I assume you mean insurance or social security. If you mean that some people had the impression and were told that social security was going to be equivalent to a retirement investment, then those people are just wrong. But I will agree that the misconception is fairly common. However that is no excuse for those of us who do know that social security is to indulge in that misconception. Social security is a form of insurance because it does the basic thing that insurance does. It takes in premiums and promises a variable payback depending on how long you live, how much you paid into the system, and when you started drawing benefits. Now you can argue that it is a poor insurance program, or even that it is an unfair insurance program. But you can’t say it isn’t insurance.
 
sedonaman said:
If you call a horse’s tail a leg, how many legs does he have?
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I am not merely calling it insurance, as if I am calling a horse’s tail a leg. I supported that claim by citing characteristics of social security that conform to the generally accepted definition of insurance. If you think I was in error in making that claim then the rational thing to do would be to show how my citations were incorrect. Making a quip about a horse’s legs does nothing to advance your position.
 
LeafByNiggle said:
I am not merely calling it insurance, as if I am calling a horse’s tail a leg. I supported that claim by citing characteristics of social security that conform to the generally accepted definition of insurance. If you think I was in error in making that claim then the rational thing to do would be to show how my citations were incorrect. Making a quip about a horse’s legs does nothing to advance your position.
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Law makers give their proposed legislation “motherhood” names, names like “The Safe Drinking Water Act of 2012” so that anyone who votes against it will be labeled as being against safe drinking water, and anyone who votes for it can claim he is for safe drinking water. How many votes would the SS Act have gotten if they called it what it is, “The Ponzi Scheme Act of 1936”?
 
sedonaman said:
Law makers give their proposed legislation “motherhood” names, names like “The Safe Drinking Water Act of 2012” so that anyone who votes against it will be labeled as being against safe drinking water, and anyone who votes for it can claim he is for safe drinking water. How many votes would the SS Act have gotten if they called it what it is, “The Ponzi Scheme Act of 1936”?
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Instead of speculating on the motives of those who give names to laws, why don’t you try to justify why SS is a Ponzi scheme? I have already given my reasons why I think it is not.
 
LeafByNiggle said:
The fact that social security is funded by younger workers has always been known. It is not a deception. Also, unlike a Ponzi scheme, social security has never promised an impossible return on your investment. It was not even represented as a money-making investment as Ponzi schemes are. It was represented as insurance, which you might not benefit from if you don’t live long enough, and that is OK. The fact that the worker-to-beneficiary ratio is so out of whack is mostly due to the improvement in general health and longevity - something that should be celebrated, not bemoaned, particularly if you are pro-life. The numbers are also temporarily skewed by the fact that the baby boom generation is now largely retired. When the baby boom generation has passed on then you can expect the ratio to improve. Also a slight and gradual increase in the retirement age for social security would be both more responsible and more in line with the original concept of social security. You have not demonstrated that this and other adjustments could not bring it back into solvency, your unsubstantiated rants notwithstanding.
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Wow! Have you ever studied Social Security? Your arguments sound more ideological than practical.

Just like a Ponzi scheme, Social Security paid out 20% to the first wave of retirees. It is now paying out about 2% and that amount is going lower. The final farce of Social Security being “insurance” is ready to fall. Soon Social Security will be means tested. The system is broke. If you earn too much money, you will receive NO money from Social Security. That sounds like welfare to me.
 
LeafByNiggle said:
Instead of speculating on the motives of those who give names to laws, why don’t you try to justify why SS is a Ponzi scheme? I have already given my reasons why I think it is not.
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👍👍

Very good! Communists always have pretty names for their Communist fronts.
 
LeafByNiggle said:
Instead of speculating on the motives of those who give names to laws, why don’t you try to justify why SS is a Ponzi scheme? I have already given my reasons why I think it is not.
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I think ACCT covered this adequately
“Nø, they can’t.”
.
 
ACCT said:
Wow! Have you ever studied Social Security? Your arguments sound more ideological than practical.

Just like a Ponzi scheme, Social Security paid out 20% to the first wave of retirees. It is now paying out about 2% and that amount is going lower. The final farce of Social Security being “insurance” is ready to fall. Soon Social Security will be means tested. The system is broke. If you earn too much money, you will receive NO money from Social Security. That sounds like welfare to me.
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When you say it is now paying out 2% do you mean that people collecting social security today are scheduled to receive only 2% of what they put in over their working lifetime? Please clarify your statistic so I know what you are referring to. Even better, give me a link to a primary source so I can see what it really means. As for what happens when social security becomes means tested, at this point it is just speculation because it has not been decided yet. If SS changes then it would be appropriate to reevaluate whether it is a Ponzi scheme. But right now those changes are not certain.
 
sedonaman said:
Law makers give their proposed legislation “motherhood” names, names like “The Safe Drinking Water Act of 2012” so that anyone who votes against it will be labeled as being against safe drinking water, and anyone who votes for it can claim he is for safe drinking water. How many votes would the SS Act have gotten if they called it what it is, “The Ponzi Scheme Act of 1936”?
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👍

Biggest fraud ever perpetrated upon the American public. The only reason it is being exposes now is that the parameters have changed so much since it was enacted, that the whole scheme has gone broke. Too many people live too long and draw out the funds, which they were never intended to do. If people had continued to have the lifespan they did in 1936, the fund might have continued in solvency. Then again, the 50 million plus future taxpayers that have been aborted would have had a negative effect in any case.

Social Security is nothing but a Ponzi scheme.
 
TheRealJuliane said:
👍

Biggest fraud ever perpetrated upon the American public. The only reason it is being exposes now is that the parameters have changed so much since it was enacted, that the whole scheme has gone broke. Too many people live too long and draw out the funds, which they were never intended to do. If people had continued to have the lifespan they did in 1936, the fund might have continued in solvency. Then again, the 50 million plus future taxpayers that have been aborted would have had a negative effect in any case.

Social Security is nothing but a Ponzi scheme.
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I once looked up life-expectancy tables for those born around the time of its passage. A male born in 1940 had a life expectancy of only 60 years. He had to be 65 to collect anything. Obviously, he was expected to die at the switch and never collect a dime.
 
TheRealJuliane said:
👍

Biggest fraud ever perpetrated upon the American public. The only reason it is being exposes now is that the parameters have changed so much since it was enacted, that the whole scheme has gone broke. Too many people live too long and draw out the funds, which they were never intended to do. If people had continued to have the lifespan they did in 1936, the fund might have continued in solvency. Then again, the 50 million plus future taxpayers that have been aborted would have had a negative effect in any case.

Social Security is nothing but a Ponzi scheme.
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I guess your relying on the Joseph Goebbels old adage. “Tell a lie often enough…”.

SSI is an American success story. It’s kept millions of elderly, out of poverty. This was, and remains it’s intent. Nobody is being mislead by it. Claiming it’s a Ponzi scheme, is false.

ATB
 
sedonaman said:
I once looked up life-expectancy tables for those born around the time of its passage. A male born in 1940 had a life expectancy of only 60 years. He had to be 65 to collect anything. Obviously, he was expected to die at the switch and never collect a dime.
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Hmmm, thats sort of the way Insurance operates. Coincidence? There is no such thing.

ATB
 
LeafByNiggle said:
When you say it is now paying out 2% do you mean that people collecting social security today are scheduled to receive only 2% of what they put in over their working lifetime? Please clarify your statistic so I know what you are referring to. Even better, give me a link to a primary source so I can see what it really means. As for what happens when social security becomes means tested, at this point it is just speculation because it has not been decided yet. If SS changes then it would be appropriate to reevaluate whether it is a Ponzi scheme. But right now those changes are not certain.
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Yes, the 20% and 2% returns are based on what the worker put into Social Security. My “primary source” of information was based on the data that was in my graduate course in economics. The data in the economics text book was referenced.

Social Security and Medicare are in deep, deep trouble. This can not go on forever. My guess is that Social Security will be means tested to stop the red ink. At that point, Social Insecurity will exposed for what it really is, welfare, not the myth of insurance.

The Social Security Board of Trustees recently released its annual report, including information about the assets of the combined funds, indicating major changes are needed. A previous milestone for the Social Security program was 1983, when significant long-term modifications were made to address funding issues, according to the Social Security Administration (SSA).
 
TheRealJuliane said:
Biggest fraud ever perpetrated upon the American public. The only reason it is being exposes now is that the parameters have changed so much since it was enacted, that the whole scheme has gone broke. Too many people live too long and draw out the funds, which they were never intended to do. If people had continued to have the lifespan they did in 1936, the fund might have continued in solvency…
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The very fact that you admit that SS might have remained solvent if people continued to have the same lifespan shows that even you believe that a simple change in the retirement age would make it sustainable. One of the characteristics of a Ponzi scheme is that someone (usually the earliest “investors”) reaps huge unjust profits at the expense of later investors. But who plays that role in SS? Sure, there are some people who got out more than they put in, but that is the nature of insurance. We don’t fault the person whose house burns down for taking more out of the insurance pie than he put in (unless he set the fire himself or was grossly negligent). And we don’t feel sorry for the guy who paid his homeowner’s insurance premium all his life and never got anything out of it because he never had a fire or an accident. Similarly, the people who are lucky enough to live longer and get more out of SS are not to be blamed for living longer. And if you are pro-life you should be celebrating longer lifespans, not bemoaning them. However we do need to recognize that people are living longer and we cannot continue to subsidize early retirement. I would be in complete agreement to a gradual increase in the retirement age. As Mikey Finn just said, there is no deception here.
 
ACCT said:
Yes, the 20% and 2% returns are based on what the worker put into Social Security. My “primary source” of information was based on the data that was in my graduate course in economics. The data in the economics text book was referenced.
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…so you are conveniently unable to provide a link to anything I could verify unless I go buy a copy of your text book. No thanks.
Social Security and Medicare are in deep, deep trouble. This can not go on forever. My guess is that Social Security will be means tested to stop the red ink.
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Well, you can guess all you want. But what can you prove? That’s all I care about. My guess is you misunderstood the statistic in your textbook and are misapplying it.
 
Mickey_Finn said:
Hmmm, thats sort of the way Insurance operates. Coincidence? There is no such thing.

ATB
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Why Social Security is welfare, by Robert J. Samuelson: …Here is how I define a welfare program: First, it taxes one group to support another group, meaning it’s pay-as-you-go and not a contributory scheme where people’s own savings pay their later benefits. And second, Congress can constantly alter benefits, reflecting changing needs, economic conditions and politics. Social Security qualifies on both counts.
I can assure you that payroll taxes for Social Security and Medicare are taxes, **not **an insurance premium.
 
LeafByNiggle said:
…so you are conveniently unable to provide a link to anything I could verify unless I go buy a copy of your text book. No thanks.

Well, you can guess all you want. But what can you prove? That’s all I care about. My guess is you misunderstood the statistic in your textbook and are misapplying it.
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I know what I know about Social Security based upon a graduate course in economics. Additionally, I did not make the highest grades in economics, statistics, accounting, etc. by misunderstanding the statistics in the text book.

What do you base your arguments on?
 
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