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Feds Call Full-Tilt Poker a 'Global Ponzi Scheme'
blair1q writes "Popular (and heavily advertised) poker website Full-Tilt Poker was sued today by the U.S. government, following an investigation that revealed it to be a massive Ponzi Scheme. The principals in the company set up a complicated system to direct funds from subscribers' poker accounts into their own bank accounts. This was in contravention of their own claim that users' money was untouched. Players' accounts amounted to $390 million, but the company only has $60 million in the bank, having over time distributed $440 million to its own directors and executives."
I wonder if there is any precedent or international agreement that the US government has to abide by in order to get monies back to international players? Probably not. Can you imagine players begging the US for their money and us just saying "well, we'll have it to you as soon as we can." *years and years pass.*
...I suggest people think about this sort of thing. Not all businesses are scams, but the people raking in millions of dollars a year aren't earning it. Their inheriting it, winning it or stealing it, and they deserve to be taxed at a higher rate.
The CB App. What's your 20?
Of course, it's no worse than bit-coin.
Feds declare online poker illegal. And seize all funds used by payment processors to pay American citizens. And then declare it to be a ponzi because it is now underwater by the amount they stole (seized).
US books are open. Private companies' books are not. Definition of Ponzi scheme involves fraud; how can you have fraud when the books are open? Perry and other illiterates are not questioning the values in the books; therefore Social Security is not a Ponzi Scheme.
Any questions?
The government hates competition.
Why aren't they going after the banks for the exact same thing.
Competition is not allowed.
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
Is your assertion is that only the "biggest" problem at any given moment should be addressed, with everything else being ignored?
Banks don't have cash on hand to pay every account holder should they all choose to cash out their accounts.
Ian Ameline
Are you suggesting that $330 million gone missing is a small problem?
The Daddy casts sleep on the Baby. The Baby resists!
no shit.
They should really get Bernie out of jail, he belongs in either the Fed or SS/Medicare board of trustees.
You can't handle the truth.
Compared to trillions, absolutely.
And here we have an example of why dumb regulations make everyone suffer. The poker market basically consists of 4 major companies- PokerStars, Full Tilt Poker, Ultimate Bet/Absolute Poker, and Cake Poker. Together they control 90% of the market, charge huge fees (rake - a high stakes pro friend of mine earned $100k last year and paid $50k in rake to the sites), are marred by scandals and have crappy software that is years old with terrible security flaws (like using xor encryption for traffic).
There's a market for an online poker site, but because of shoddy laws regulating a game of skill between consenting parties, it is near impossible to setup a poker site. We were going to do this before by making a bitcoin poker site but the lawyer wanted a $20 million retainer. The scandals are due to the huge initial cost to opening a poker site that enables these 4 sites to retain a cartel with artificially high prices in the poker world.
Don't blame the bazaar. Blame the regulations on your social life and freedom to choose how to spend your cash.
And this is why we need bitcoin. All hail the bitcoin and the wonderous things people will create. Imagine all those people playing counterstrike or World of Warcraft all day long for nothing. Now imagine is they could compete with each other for cash. A new digital economy with professional video game players. Or imagine funding your favourite free software projects, artists or Wikileaks.
Look up Ponzi Scheme. It requires fraud, misrepresentation. US Govt is not lying about where the money goes. The Poker company is.
Online poker is illegal in a lot of countries so these sites operate outside the law. They have done questionable things before although not on this scale. But this shouldn't be a surprise to anyone, my friends who play on Fulltilt and similar sites withdraw their winnings regularly and only keep in enough money to play with exacly for this reason.
Let's replace the people with their roles in an actual ponzi scheme:
"current beneficiaries are getting paid by current investors, and current investors are hoping to get paid by future investors. SS doesn't have any books, all of the funds are fake, they are moving fungible money back and forward"
Similarly, the US postal service wouldn't be having a problem if the Republicans hadn't raided the fuck out of them in the 1980s (when they were profitable) while holding up and blocking bills this year that would have required the US to pay back the $50 billion stolen from it.
But this is rather like other Republican attitudes - raid raid raid, golden parachute.
If I had mod points, I'd mod you up. The Federal Reserve system, Social Security and Medicare are all pure ponzi schemes that fit the definition of a ponzi scheme perfectly. Its laughable that the Feds are calling what they do themselves a 'crime' simply because it is not them perpetrating it.
The similarities to the government ponzi schemes are uncanny; both claim that monies should have been untouched, but have been (only allegedly in the case of Full Tilt and actually in the case of the Feds) spent away. Astonishing.
Unless anyone who plays Full-Tilt Poker has complained of fraud, the Federal Government has no business suing that company, since it is not an injured party. This is yet another attack on online poker; despicable, ridiculous and evil.
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Are you suggesting that $330 million gone missing is a small problem?
I suppose it depends on who's money it is.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
Well I indeed do, first of all it is not missing, they know exactly where it is, secondly as long as the owners guarantee they will eventually pay out they are doing better as, well I dunno, every freaking bank in the US, not that this is in any regards important since the economy is in such a fine state because of, I dunno, those same freaking banks?
Anyone who played poker towards the End (April 15th) had to know the danger, withdrawals were sometimes taking months, checks were bouncing...the writing was on the wall. The fact that FTP didn't have the funds to pay everyone off when the government seized their domain name (as well as numerous payment processor seizures leading up to the shutdown costing them millions) does not make them a Ponzi scheme; it means they were operating on belief that money would continue to come in, just like many "legitmate" businesses. When a company goes bankrupt they line up and hope to get paid from what's left, unfortunately for those of us who lost money, Uncle Sam seized it. If they truly feel this is a Ponzi scheme then why don't they take all the seized money, including the payment processor money, and pay us "victims" back with it?
Does this mean that they won't hassle foreign gambling site operators, and imprision them?
This seems like the pot calling the kettle black to me....what do you think...IE the FED
You should really look up the meaning of the word "definition". SS is only a Ponzi scheme in the politically-motivated opinions of extreme right-wing talking heads. A politically-motivated opinion does not equal "by definition".
The CB App. What's your 20?
Real casinos are not required to keep cash on hand for the full value of the chips they give players, and the reason is quite simple - the games are designed such that the casino will always make money! This is even more true in a virtual casino! Every once in a while, someone wins a lot of money, but it's usually at the expense of other players or nothing that can't be recovered in a day or two. However, now that the cat is out of the bag, a lot of players may end up trying to cash out at once.
Bzzzt. Wrong. "hoping to get paid by future workers". It is 100% clear how the system works: less workers in the future means less money in the future; it is funded ad hoc (in theory) by the current labor force. It is in NO WAY a guarantee! That's not a ponzi scheme.
My problem with SS is that it takes in more than it spends and then the surplus has been used by greedy politicians since it first funded the Vietnam War. The program isn't the problem, it is the theivery of the surplus. It should be saved to extend the program, or refunded to taxpayers every year.
But it is no way a Ponzi scheme.
https://www.accountkiller.com/removal-requested
Banks do the exact same crap which is why we are in this mess.
Even their aims are different: a Ponzi scheme is meant to concentrate the wealth of many into the hands of the few people who are running the scheme. Social Security aims to achieve a level of wealth redistribution, nominally to ensure that people no longer in the workforce are able to support themselves. Whether or not you feel it achieves that aim is certainly something that can be discussed, but a Ponzi scheme it is not.
The CB App. What's your 20?
and this was marked -1. angry republican digg factor.
https://www.accountkiller.com/removal-requested
If Al Gore hadn't invented the Internet, then the post office wouldn't be loosing business due to less people sending letters. It's all the Democrats' fault!
It's only okay for Goldman Sachs to do this.
Capital gains is NOT the same as income tax. You are comparing apples and oranges. If you want to compare apples to apples, look at capital gains PLUS corporate income tax. It amounts to over 50%, except for companies that are in bed with the white house (GE).
That you have a normal job paying a taxable wage (you may not, actually.)
That you actually do anything to earn money off of your money (you may not do a whole lot other than make sure it is in a profitable investment.)
This isn't aimed at people that have a full time jobs and 'invest full time'. This is aiming at people that their whole 'income' is basically just living off their fat amounts of money, making more money than they can spend easily.
No! It's a *SIG*. Keep the Special Interest Groups away! (Con joke!)
Bernie lied, the govt is not.
Ponzi Scheme has become a blanket term when it's a very specific type of fraud. What they were doing is embezzlement and the practice predates Ponzi Schemes. A Ponzi Scheme is where I take investments from say a 100 people a year and I use money from the second hundred to pay the first hundred. They tend to pyramid and collapse when people decide they want to take their money out. The longer lived ones survive by paying insane interest rates so people are afraid to pull out their money and actually encourage friends to "get in on the deal". Siphoning out the money is clearly embezzlement and not a Ponzi Scheme.
Banks don't have cash on hand to pay every account holder should they all choose to cash out their accounts.
They don't have enough cash to pay every account holder if they came in to collect on same day. They do, however, have enough assets and accounts receivable (outstanding loans) to cover. It may take some time but, they could, in principle pay off all their account holders.
Full Tilt, on the other hand, doesn't have the money in any form. What they owe to their subscribers can not be paid. The money isn't on loan to another entity who is obligated to pay it back. It is "spent". That's a big difference.
But the bank (if it's solvent) has assets, ie Loans, that exceed the value of its obligations to depositors. Your complaint is that the bank cannot convert that long-term stream of payments into cash should all of its depositors simultaneously withdraw everything from their accounts. Full-Tilt-Poker, on the other hand, does not (apparently) have any assets to cover the obligations to its players.
Not entirely true.
As originally implemented, social security was meant to be a private trust, not a government slush fund.
Ss became a ponzi scheme when it (the federal goverment) raided the social security assets and replaced them with IOUs, while still presenting social security as a safe, solvent way to save money for retirement.
Also, ss was originally intended to be opt in, and not voluntary, like it is now.
Looks like Full-Tilt will need a bailout!
I posted in past discussions of on-line power about the absurd number of ways that players could and would be cheated, but was always modded down and responded to with stuff like They have no need to cheat or steal, they get a cut of each game and would never risk that". So no pity for those taken who stupidly believed it just couldn't happen. And I'll be going to a casino in either Atlantic City or Pittsburgh in the next few week, so if any of you have money that you can no longer gamble in on-line poker please let me know, I'll play roulette for you; send me the money and let me know how you want it bet and I'll tell you later if you won or not.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
Let's start from the fact that it does NOT matter, whether there is lying about where the money goes or not. So, just in itself, lying is not necessary to have a ponzi scheme. In fact people who get into a ponzi scheme early on, may easily be aware of it, but they will likely benefit, so they don't care.
Secondly, gov't certainly lies about SS, lied about it from the start. Pretended that SS is an insurance system, even didn't start the payouts for 2 years after the program was started. All to pretend there is some fund. Of-course it was never a fund, and it's an easy to show fact:
Helvering v. Davis, 301 U.S. 619 (1937), decided on the same day as Steward, upheld the program because "The proceeds of both [employee and employer] taxes are to be paid into the Treasury like internal-revenue taxes generally, and are not earmarked in any way". That is, the Social Security Tax was constitutional as a mere exercise of Congress's general taxation powers. - the gov't argued that SS payments are not earmarked, not actually going to be used for any purpose, but are only collected under general taxation powers of Congress.
Of-course the judge in the Supreme Court was very lazy, he didn't care (*was complicit*) and wrote this: The argument for the respondent is that the provisions of the two titles dovetail in such a way as to Justify the conclusion that Congress would have been unwilling to pass one without the other. The argument for petitioners is that the tax moneys are not earmarked, and that Congress is at liberty to spend them as it will. The usual separability clause is embodied in the act. ' 1103.
We find it unnecessary to make a choice between the arguments, and so leave the question open.
The entire point of the court was to figure out whether SS taxes were Constitutional or not, and the judge said: I don't care, I'll leave the question open!
SS is absolutely clearly NOT SHOWN TO BE CONSTITUTIONAL in this judgment. At the very minimum it's a "maybe", but it's definitely not a "YES", which is what SCOTUS is SUPPOSED to show.
The only difference between a private and a government ran ponzi scam is that you can't GET OUT of a government ran ponzi scam, so that's the ONLY thing that keeps it alive once people recognize it what it is.
Try this: make it optional. Allow people to just opt out. How many, do you think, would take that offer immediately to stop paying the 12%? (12%, which will grow, it must, Reagan did it to keep the scam going.)
You can't handle the truth.
Sounds just like the fractional reserve banking system...
Yeah, and so the pizza delivery guy shouldn't have to pay taxes because the money I use to buy the pizza has already been taxed before I use it to buy the pizza.
You're conflating capital-gains / earned-income / wealth / job-creation.
They aren't the same. I can invest money in a publicly traded company that opens an office in China and hires Chinese workers. How does that help jobs in the USofA? How does that get people earning money by their labor in the USofA?
Social security isn't a ponzi scheme, its just the victim of the United State's own success and radical advancements in medicine and thus life expectancy. The life expectancy in the US in 1935 was 58, in 2000 it was 74. The initial planners probably just didn't expect the majority of people to live long enough to collect. I guess that's gambling, but making it out to be ponzi scheme I think is an incorrect assessment. It looks like the retirement age started out with SS at 65 or 62 at half pay or whatever. But the life expectancy increased past that dramatically after World War II, especially with women. So for the past 60 years now, we've had the average life expectancy greater than that of the retirement age, and probably social security didn't plan properly for that. I'm just looking at the numbers though, so it might be more or less than that.
"A Ponzi scheme is a fraudulent investment operation that pays returns to separate investors from their own money or money paid by subsequent investors, rather than from any actual profit earned"
Where does Social Security claim to make a profit, or claim anything other than what it does? Ponzi schemes lie about what they are doing; the govt is not lying.
How would you have the SS funds stored? As pallets of dollar bills? Or perhaps something safer, that earns a return, like T-Bills?
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By definition SS is a ponzi scheme, and as I wrote here it's also not shown to be Constitutional.
By definition, because there is and never was a fund, an asset to tap into, it's all based on payment transfers.
LB is confusing personal tax liability of capital gains with the double taxation of corporate earnings. Or to put another way - He's mixing two different issues: capital gains taxes and the double taxation of corporate earnings.
no not at all. I'm quite fair. anybody who gets their opinions wholesale from radio/cable talk shows gets modded flamebait, whether they blame the left or the right for all the world's woes.
Because surprise surprise, it's flamebait. that's what the moderation choice is there for.
how can you have fraud when the books are open?
Social Security is an excellent example. All the money that goes into Social Security is used to purchase internal bonds, immediately transferring the money to the general budget. That's the first element of this "open" scam, namely, that there's no investment of Social Security funds. It's merely a tool so that Congress can spend more.
That's especially mendacious given the propaganda, particularly, the supposed "untouchable" nature of Social Security. The money goes into a "lock box", but that money is already spent.
Second, Social Security shows the defining characteristic of a Ponzi scam, latter entrants get less return than the early ones. There has been a consistent decline in the ratio of payout to payment ever since the beginning of Social Security. The late babyboomers (say born in late 50s or early 60s) are the first group that's going to get less out than it put in. Later generations will have it even worse.
Know when to Fold Em.
If you don't know who mark is at the poker table, you are it.
I tend to be more "in your face" type of guy, but can see your approach working better! ;)
To stay on topic, "US books are open" -- which books? Certainly not Federal Reserve Bank books, or why would it take Bloomberg a lawsuit to see *some* of dirty little dealing which were going on, like "shadow TARP" (http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0811/62358.html), and why original version of H.R. 1207 was never passed, again? ;)
For the record, if what prosecutors are alleging that poker company was doing is true, I fully support going after them for fraud -- but, I would still not call *them* running Ponzi scheme, unless they were letting new "investors" in and paying them with money siphoned from old "investors", or were operating some kind of "poker-playing coop" and promised "guaranteed" gains -- crazy idea, is not it? :) Otherwise, garden variety embezzlement...
But, knowing gov't attitude towards gambling sites, I would take what they are saying with a grain of salt, until proven otherwise.
Paul B.
the good thing about a private ponzi scam is that one can EXIT, take the losses and leave.
There is no difference between the way SS or any other ponzi scam is financed, but there is a difference that in case of government, even if you KNOW it's a scam, you can't get out.
(but the kids that are growing up now, they'll get nothing out of SS but will be paying through the nose in this employment market, they should just exist for real - leave USA and move somewhere else.)
You can't handle the truth.
As is my pay. As is every dollar in my wallet. The taxes have been paid.
And once I have paid the taxes on my income, what is "left over *belongs*" to me.
Therefore, the taxes have been paid and the pizza delivery guy does NOT owe any taxes (by your logic) on the money I pay him.
No. I understand it. Again, you are the one incorrectly conflating:
capital gains
earned income
wealth
job creation
but they are NOT the same.
But neither are they open about some of the projects the money goes towards.
Or one can view Social Security as an example that has somewhat different motives from the usual implementation of the Ponzi scheme.
except for the fact that you don't go to jail if you choose not to play online poker.
http://docs.justia.com/cases/federal/district-courts/new-york/nysdce/1:2011cv02564/377900/49/1.pdf
BS. Social Security is the personal piggy bank of the Fed; all it has to do is write an IOU and make a withdrawal. In order to pay back that IOU the Fed will have to print more money, causing rampant inflation. They pay it back with dollars that are worth less than the dollars they took out. The only significant thing making this different than a Ponzi scheme is that the Fed is "guaranteed" and cannot go bankrupt. If you or I ran such a fund we'd be in jail, because our IOUs would be worthless, but the Fed's IOUs are guaranteed by the government - they might be worthless, but they're worth exactly as many dollars as they say they are. It's just that those dollars won't be worth anything if they have to print enough money to pay them back.
How is this different from fractional reserve banking? Oh, it's OK when *you* do it? I see.
Social Security as it is now is robbing your children and grandchildren to pay for yourself, because the trust fund was spent and all payouts now come from the vastly-in-debt general fund. Call it what you want, it's certainly not a retirement savings plan.
And what does it matter what the intentions of the plan are. Nothing could matter less. What it is and what it does and what it will do are important. Not one person can retire on intentions.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
And let me emphasize that Social Security doesn't retain funds, it uses funds from new contributors to pay off the old ones. That's classic Ponzi scheme behavior.
It may seem like a fractional reserve banking system... to those that don't know how a regulated casino is managed. A legitimate casino will always hold sufficient cash to cover all of the chips in play. What ever chips the croupier wins from the players at the point the table closes... only then can the casino take the money to the bank.
Luke, help me take this mask off
Social Securtiy no longer takes in more than it spends. It's been cashflow negative for a while now (since early 2011 IIRC).
When there was a trust fund, I'd agree that it was unfair to cal it a Ponzi scheme. But now? If you tried to make a private program that worked that way, you'd be arrested and the newpapers would certainly call it a Ponzi scheme.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
At least you got that partially right.
Yes it is "exchanging hands a second time". It is a asset of the company's. It is NOT an asset of yours until the company pays a dividend (and is taxed).
You are a stockholder. That is all. That gives you certain rights in certain situations but that does NOT mean that a portion of the profit that the company makes is yours.
Here's a simple experiment to prove that. Buy stock in Microsoft and then go there and demand x% of their profits as your right by stock ownership.
Yes, just instead of holding your money in the forms of legitimate investments, they are holding your money in their wallets.
This site seems legit, let's give them our money!
The FEDs must be using some of that "Obama" math to make their case.
>> So in other words is exactly like social security, except for the fact that you don't go to jail if you choose not to play online poker.
That's cute, and completely inaccurate.
Any retirement investment method is counting on the gradual growth of the value its investments over time. Most methods assume investment into activities that will result in value-added business from which surplus value can be extracted. Since any one investment has a risk of either under-performing or going completely tits-up, risk is managed by making a diverse group of investments.
The US Federal Government is "invested" in the prosperity of the US. Social Security is therefore diversified over an entire national economy, recovering taxes from a range of activities. The advantages of this "ultimate index fund" are low administrative overhead and risk.
Both private and public retirement plans are predicated on the assumption that there is long term growth in the investments, the basis for the continued function of a modern market economy. If/when this isn't the case, the paradigm falls apart, and members of a cash economy would need to salt away the entire value needed to provide for their post-earning years.
Luke, help me take this mask off
Then do it. Wait, there's going to be some caveat to that statement, isn't there?
And now you cannot tell the different between DIVIDENDS and capital gains from selling stock.
You lose.
For a comparison, I own the money in my bank account. I OWN it. It is mine.
When I go to the bank and say I want $X from my account, they give it to me.
You do NOT own any of the profit that the company makes OTHERWISE you could go and claim it from the company.
I'll expand my earlier statement about the things you are incorrectly conflating:
capital gains
earned income
wealth
job creation
THE STOCK MARKET
and DIVIDENDS.
What a dumb comment. Social security is no more than a special tax to support old people. It is not an "investment" or "account" for your own money that you will get back.
If Social Security doesn't retain funds then how do they purchase the bonds you mentioned in your last post?
Of course you don't. As I said, you are incorrectly conflating:
capital gains
earned income
wealth
job creation
THE STOCK MARKET
and DIVIDENDS.
If you really owned part of the company's profit then you could go into the company and take the portion of the profit that you own.
You failed to understand that concept and instead you switched to a tangent about selling stock.
Selling stock is NOT the same as taking a portion of the company's profit (that you claim you own). But feel free to keep arguing that it is.
Here is what you posted:
Damned by your own posting. Looks like you lose ... again!
Motives like "let's regressively tax the poor in order to bankroll sending future generations off to die in fraudulent unnecessary wars so we can become a nation of worthless unproductive elderly, warmongering techno-fetishists, overpopulating immigrant laborers, subsidized failed banksters and pharmaceutical-grade Hopium(TM) dispensaries".
"I assumed blithely that there were no elves out there in the darkness"
This comment should not be modded as troll. He speaks a lot of truth in this. The government IS committing fraud, deceit, breaking its own laws, rules and promises. They tell uyou s we pay taxes for our own services such as roads, medical and retirement benefits. But the truth is, we only get a fraction of what we pay in through those channels. The rest is going to foreign aid, waging war and repaying their corporate and large 'donors' and 'contributors' interests.
The parent is PISSED OFF and you should be too if you are paying any attention at all. Being angry or disappointed in one's government is not troll behavior. Parent is spot on.
The government knows it when it sees it, but continues to do those things itself on a regular and frequent basis.
But you know? We're talking about a gambling service here. Here's what I think:
People should be allowed to (1) smoke tobacco (2) drink alcohol (3) use drugs (4) access prostitutes (5) gamble and more. And if any of these are decidedly "risky" behaviors, then that person needs to be unenrolled in various government programs which have connection to those activities. For example, smokers and obese people need to lose any medical benefits and services associated with being a smoker or being obese because these people are a needless drain on resources. Where gambling is concerned, these same people need to lose eligibility to collecting welfare benefits and gambling organizations should be "open" (as in transparent) as a requirement of continued operation. Prostitution should be legalized across the nation and regulated similarly -- it is a "moral crime" and the government has no place in dealing with such moral issues. But if a person manages to get an STD due to their risky behavior, see my stance on other self-induced or self-caused medical problems. (In short, if they make their bed, make them lie in it and let Darwinism sort things out.)
No, it's not an account, however your lifetime payment into the system is recorded and used to calculate your payments.
If you live longer than 75, you will get more money out of social security than you put into it. So while technically true, you do in fact get your money back (and more) so long as the government keeps running it.
The fact is, the government was borrowing from the social security fund for decades, and never paid that money back. If you were to take that money into account, then social security would have no crisis.
Even so, that crisis is short lived. As the boomers die off, the fund will re-stabilize.
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Consider these sites can close player's account at any time, without an explanation. Back in 2006 when UIGEA weren't enacted yet, some of my friends lost tens of thousands of dollars from account being frozen due to "management decision", with no chance of appeal.
Now we finally see some possibility to regulate the industry. But before full legalization can happen, there are previous scores that need to be settle first.
New Economic Perspectives
Technically, there are ways to opt out of social security. Most employers will not support it as it is too complex and raises questions from the government. Some local governments in Texas are already providing social security alternatives to their workers and it works for them.
Social Security was supposed to be an investment for retirement. It is the worst retirement fund ever if people actually do the math where people pay in for about 40 years and get a fraction of what they paid in for a fraction of the time they paid in... and that fraction keeps getting worse as "retirement age" gets pushed higher while the age at which careers wind down get pushed lower.
But to be sure, there are opt-out methods, but you have to have an employer willing to assist. (Also, there are medical savings accounts that are available but, once again, employers have to be willing to support the programs... instead, I pay LOTS of money for medical insurance I never use because I remain healthy the vast majority of the time while the money I pay in supports people who smoke, eat wrong, do drugs, engage in risky behavior and more.)
If you want "out" you have to work your way out.
> accounts amounted to $390 million, but the company only has $60 million in the bank
So then Full Tilt Poker is just like a major US bank, except with more reserves.
Okay, let's not call it a ponzi scheme. Instead, let's talk about social security based on what it's supposed to be and how it's failing. It's supposed to be an investment for the people. The majority of the people get back less than they pay in. If this is an investment, it's a failing one and should be closed as a failed project. If it's a retirement fund, it's leaking money somehow because people can never get back what they pay in.
Whatever thing you want to call social security, it does not live up to whatever you think it is. So tell me, what do you think it is?
(In short, if they make their bed, make them lie in it and let Darwinism sort things out.)
I'd love it if we could keep the (extreme, yet highly politically active) biblethumpers hands out of it. Sadly, their first act would be declare that pretty much everything that goes wrong is your own fault. Went blind? Your fault, you fapped too much. Little Sally suffers from Leukemia? Her fault, she's a whore. So what if she's 4, she started early.
Once you've decided that bad things happen to bad people (btw, any bible thumpers out there who believe this: Job, you lose) there's excuses for everything, it's all divine punishment.
Except you were claiming that a portion of their profit was YOUR money because you were an investor.
So when you got some of that profit, it had already been taxed and you should not have to pay taxes on it.
So unless you're now trying to claim that you were talking about stock sales the whole time (which have NOTHING to do with corporate profits as you would know if you understood this) and just managed to use the completely incorrect terminology ...
What was that I've been saying? Oh yeah! It was that you are incorrectly conflating:
capital gains
earned income
wealth
job creation
THE STOCK MARKET
and DIVIDENDS.
Company profit is NOT owed you via increased stock prices. Do NOT try to conflate those items.
But keep posting. This is turning into an excellent educational thread for anyone else claiming "double taxation".
Excuse me, but those "IOUs" you are referring to are Treasury Bonds.
Do you know what you call someone who owns a million dollars in Treasury Bonds? A "millionaire".
I don't understand why when they are in the Social Security Trust Fund everyone calls them "IOUs" but when they are in your 401k they're called "AAA rated, blue chip securities". (I guess technically, one of the three rating agencies has them rated as "AA+" or some such. But either way, they are by far the most popular security in the world. Even more popular than Apple stock.) The Treasury Bonds that are in the Social Security Trust Fund are more certain, more valuable than gold bullion. And they are valued more highly around the world than gold bullion.
Whenever you see someone say "Oh, there is no Social Security Trust Fund, it's just a bunch of IOUs!" you know immediately that you're hearing from someone who has obtained their understanding of Social Security and the operations of the US government from right-wing AM radio talk shows.
It's not a "Ponzi scheme" it's an insurance program. Do you think that your insurance company has a box somewhere with funds equal to the maximum possible payout on every single policy they have written? If Social Security can be called a "Ponzi Scheme" than the entire Insurance industry needs to be behind bars for fraud immediately. Actually, that last part may not be such a terrible idea.
Social Security is by far the most successful, most popular government program in the history of the United States of America. It's more popular than the military. It's more popular than the space program for chrissake. And it has created, practically single-handedly, what was the strongest, most prosperous middle class in the world until that fuckstick Ronald Reagan decided to destroy America at the behest of his corporate donors and a bunch of backward ideological god botherers.
You are welcome on my lawn.
I'll go "All In".
Beware of Sales Reps bearing gifts.
US books are open. Private companies' books are not. Definition of Ponzi scheme involves fraud; how can you have fraud when the books are open? Perry and other illiterates are not questioning the values in the books; therefore Social Security is not a Ponzi Scheme. Any questions?
Social Security is not a ponzi scheme but Congress may be running it like one.
The fraud is that money is collected for one purpose but spent for another. For example when the boomers were in their working years the social security surplus was spent by Congress elsewhere. Congress left IOUs. If those IOUs are not somehow paid back then there was fraud. Given that the only solutions being proposed for upcoming shortfalls is to collect more revenue or to reduce benefits the "run like ponzi scheme" meme is plausible.
A ponzi schema is taking the money from new entrants to pay out the old timers.
Poker is taking the money from losers and giving it to the winners.
And in a ponzi schema the old timers are the only ones who make money. So they are the winners, ergo the new entrants are the losers
Therefore poker is a ponzi scheme,
next.
"Oh, you hate your job? There's a support group for that, it's called everyone, they meet at the bar."
Social Security was supposed to be an investment for retirement. It is the worst retirement fund ever if people actually do the math where people pay in for about 40 years and get a fraction of what they paid in for...
That's not true Social Security is more like economic insurance enforced by the government. Many people think social security is like a retirement plan. That's only half of it.
Social Security also supports disability, unemployment, medicare, medicaid and a number of other programs. That's why you get a fraction of it back. You are not paying into a retirement plan. You are paying into a system to help keep the society healthy and stable by not allowing people to be thrown to the side of the road and left to die.
Is this a good system? Should the government do this? Those are certainly reasonable questions. Misrepresenting what the system is, however, is not useful at all (though I don't think you did that intentionally).
I pay LOTS of money for medical insurance I never use because I remain healthy the vast majority of the time while the money I pay in supports people who smoke, eat wrong, do drugs, engage in risky behavior and more.
When was the last time you had a guarantee of health from god? Staying healthy is something everyone should do. You can still get cancer. You can still break your neck. What about playing sports? That increases chances of serious injury by many times. Should we outlaw sports?
Meanwhile Social Security also covers other problems. I bet you, being so well prepared for the future. Have some money invested to secure your future? Well, what happens when the stock market collapses (like it's just done) and all your money disappears? Don't say you were irresponsible to invest because everyone thought it was a good idea at the time.
Social Security provides certain protections to everyone:
retirement benefits - to keep old retirees from starving to death
medicare/medicaid - to keep old retirees from dying from lack of medical care
unemployment - to keep people and their families/children from starving to death or losing their home - also allowing them to find new jobs
disability - to allow disabled people to survive even though they are no longer able to work
If these services are not provided you will have hoovervilles filled with desperately poor people who've lost their homes due to economic trouble. You will have both the elderly and children without health insurance. You will have the elderly choosing food or heat in the winter. You will have the disabled unable to survive.
Keep in mind many of these problems are completely out of your control. No matter how much you prepare there are no guarantees to health or economic security. You could be hit by a bus or your company president could embezzle your earnings and bankrupt your company.
The questions you have to ask yourself are these:
Is it the governments right or responsibility to do these things?
If these things are not done by Social Security how will they get done?
Do you want to live in a society where these protections are not provided?
In my case, I haven't thought it through entirely but my answers are:
No
They won't
No
Which leaves one with a conundrum.
The social security trust accounts for $2.5 trillion of the national debt. They will probably need to raise taxes down the road to pay for it.
Workers in some local governments like the one in Texas could once opt out of SS but can no longer do so. IIRC, this change was made in the 1980s. No private business could ever opt out.
Also, ss was originally intended to be opt in, and not voluntary, like it is now.
That word — I do not think it means what you think it means.
Tubal-Cain smokes the white owl.
The US attempt to ban Internet poker has already cost the taxpayers tens of billions of dollars. Why don't they give it a fucking rest already?
Do you really think that if I sold some IBM stock that IBM would get any of the money?
Wasn't that what you were talking about? You selling stock to get money that was "double taxed"?
Keep it going! This is GREAT!
No. Stock sold to stockholder A by stockholder B does NOT do ANYTHING for the corporate profits.
Allow me to continue repeating the items that you are incorrectly conflating:
capital gains
earned income
wealth
job creation
THE STOCK MARKET
and DIVIDENDS.
Again, you are wrong. For an example of how wrong you are, look at LinkedIn's IPO.
But that is just another irrelevant tangent from you. Your ORIGINAL claim was about being "double taxed".
Well you had CLAIMED it was about being "double taxed". But you keep conflating different items.
Except you keep trying to incorrectly conflate them by talking about being "double taxed" and then claiming that you can sell stock and then trying to imply that the stock you sold increased the company's profits.
No I did not.
Probably because I understand that the stock price is set by buyers and sellers and fluctuates throughout the trading day.
Looks like I found something else you didn't know but were willing to try to claim that you did.
I learned that opt-out is possible in the late 90's. I don't think it is what you think it is.
Texas is a bit of a maverick state though. It regularly defies the federal government's programs and regularly refuses federal monies where unwanted strings are attached. For example, it has often threatened to refuse highway funds which the federal government typically uses as leverage to get states to comply with various things such as information collection such as using SSNs as DL#s and crap like that. More recently, Texas attempted to opt itself out of alcohol additives in gasoline... an attempt that failed, but still Texas tried.
Texas has balls that almost no other state has. But that's what's great about Texas. There's plenty to dislike about Texas, I know, but there's also lots to love and admire.
How do you know the federal govt 'raided' the fund? Because it's all out in the open in published laws? Where are the published laws in the poker case...
They just conveniently change the rules and force you to play ... OH and that whole separate accounts thing ... That is a lie. It is in the general fund and we "borrow" against it on paper by the government buying its own t-bills ... Pathetic really.
- Tjp
I am in wallow with my inner money grubbing capitalistic pig. ... Oink!
Not true. Social Security is currently still in the black. You're trying to conflate projected debt with actual debt. The social Security Trust is, as of this moment, still an asset.
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Yes, just instead of holding your money in the forms of legitimate investments, they are holding your money in their wallets.
...and refusing to give it to you when they say they will.
This is a hacked account, for which the owner can not be held responsible.
can you please cite a source? your word as a slashdot
registered pundit doesn't count.
Yes, people lie about all kinds of things are Ponzi schemes when they don't like it in the first place.
Enjoy your old age in a carboard box, asshole.
The social security trust fund is money owed to Social Security by the federal government. What is an asset to the creditor is a liability to the debtor.
Why on earth would I want to invest in the federal government, given the state that it's currently in? AA+ is so generous it's downright ludicrous. The chances of Treasury Bonds even just beating inflation are nil, because the absurd never-ending sale of them is causing inflation. The only way to possibly pay back all the T-bonds is by printing more money. And that's exactly what the Fed will have to do.
Sorry, I misinterpreted what you were saying.
Yes, the trust fund is huge. And yes, they will hve to raise taxes to pay it back. The point is that you can't look at social security on a per year basis and say "Oh, this year they're taking in less money than they're paying out, social security is bankrupt!". That ignores the money that SS is owed.
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If Social Security doesn't retain funds then how do they purchase the bonds you mentioned in your last post?
The Social Security administration doesn't need to keep the money, they just need to handle it briefly in order for the transfer of funds to the general account to occur.
Excuse me, but a Treasury Bond is an IOU in every sense of the word, i.e., the Feds say to SS Trust Fund: "hey man, give me a $999^x today, and we'll give you $1000^x ten years from now." Then the Feds spend the money and its all gone. As in SDI or to burn up villagers in the mideast. All we have left is the Fed's promise to pay SS money at a future date. Most of us aren't totally retarded though. We get that the money the Fed's use isn't its own money, it's ours. Seriously, where do you think that future money will come from? The magical IOU canceling fairy? The pink money shitting unicorn? Step "?"?
What changed under Obama? Nothing Good
I wish I hadn't posted already -- I'd love to mod you up. That's the real sin in SS -- it taxes only lower income people but congress uses the money now to blow shit up and enrich the war profiteers. They'll all still be millionaires and billionaires when the program is bankrupt and our economy looks like Greece's -- and the rest of us can fill our bellies with dirt pancakes. SS as currently implemented is a means of stealing from the poor to give to the rich.
What changed under Obama? Nothing Good
is a social trust
it says that we do not want our older generations, and, by reference, our older selves, to die in the street
anxiety over how the system actually works financially is a red herring: it doesn't matter how it works. what matters is that you agree it is wrong that our older people should suffer because the society they live in is callous and brutal. once you agree that such a callous society does not represent the sort of society that shares your values, there is no anxiety about how it works financially. you just agree it is supposed to work and should therefore be funded
i have no problem with people who complain about the details of how social security works, or what it should fund and what it should not fund
i have a problem with those who use their lack of trust and anxiety as a cover for doubting the entire legitimacy of social security itself
if such people prevail on the national debate over this and other related issues, the united states is doomed to second class or third class status in the world, and our best and brightest children and grandchildren will surely leave for wiser and more humane societies that actually cares about its citizens' well being. those who are left will lead brutal lives, due to the opinions of people like you see posting here, and, for some reason, loudly and proudly trumpeting their inhumanity on the political stage without apparent shame or self-awareness about what callous and ugly people they are. whatever they are, they aren't americans and they don't represent american values as far as this american and the majority of americans are concerned
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Its very simply a insurance program to save stupid people (which is most people) from themselves. It doesn't have to be efficient or "make" money. Its only purpose is to keep those people to stupid to save for their retirement off the streets...
I think this is actually the same 'scheme' that all the banks and companies have done with their directors for a very very lon gtime ... I think it is called 'free market' or even better 'land of oportunities' :)
"should be saved to extend the program"
Again, how should it have been 'saved'? What form would you prefer? It seems (given the interest rates these days) that Treasury Bonds (and T-Bills) are the safest investments going, and those are "IOU's" from the US Government.
And the ability to tax and to print money is a little different from being able to write yourself a check.
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And as for your support of Ron Paul in your .sig, Oh hell no, we don't need a crazy creationist in office, thanks.
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SS is basically like a typical standard financial product: a fixed annuity with insurance premiums.
You pay the "premiums" which is part funding the annuity and part funding an insurance policy. If you get disabled or die, you (or your heirs) get the insurance payout, if you get to retirement, you get the annuity value. This is why you don't get back more than you pay in (adjusted for inflation).
The things that makes this different than a typical fixed annuity, is that instead of a bank, it's the government. Instead of investing in things that might generate a return greater than the inflation rate, it just invests in US treasury bonds. This is pretty much a guarantee of a low rate of return.
The real problem with SS isn't that its a fixed annuity + insurance product. The real problem with SS is that it isn't totally funded as the promised benefits cannot be paid out with the projected future premium stream. If this event were to happen with a "real" standard financial product, the issuer would stop selling that product, figure out a new annuity product that would "work" and start selling it instead. Maybe this new product would have a higher retirement age based on new annuity tables, lower benefits, or whatever.
The problem with SS is that the US government (or by extension, the "people") refuse to close the current product and create a new product that has real annuity-like properties (as opposed to looking more like a pyramid scheme, not a ponzi scheme).
Politics is preventing discontinuing the current product and creating a new more viable product, but in reality if SS was a product sold by a company, I'll be the Feds would eventually shut it down as it is looking more and more like a pyramid scheme.
By going after these ponzi schemes, the U.S. government might be able to actually fund social security.
Oh my god who would have ever thought that online poker sites could be anything less than one hundred percent trustworthy this is an outrage etc.
Governments don't make profit, and neither do Ponzi schemes. Individuals who are involved in both types of organization may indeed profit greatly, but they universally do it at the cost of taking money from someone else.
Your wiki quote said very nearly that, although less verbosely. How did you not understand that?
The idea behind social security was always that future generations would willfully, or otherwise, pay the way for generations going into retirement. If it were done by anyone else but the government, they'd be charged with racketeering post haste... Hell, participation in a Ponzi scheme is at the very least voluntary.
In Europe, taxes are much higher. Then again, a lot of things are cheaper or free, because of government subsidization. You could argue you don't want your government to force you to pay taxes for things you are not using at that moment, but there are a lot less poverty and a lot less insanely rich, mostly because of this. Taxes can be used successfully to distribute wealth easier, even if you have an inefficient government doing the distribution.
I was promised a flying car. Where is my flying car?
A ponzi scheme is designed to enrich the ppl who created it. Social Security is not. Did FDR get rich by taking social security taxes? Using "Ponzi Scheme" to describe Social Security is clearly a blatant ploy to cloud the issue with emotion and ignore facts.
A Ponzi scheme is one where new enrollees pay out interest to old investees. It is advertised as something else, such as a investment instrument where the investor has an account that accrues interest over time. The entity running the scheme pays current dividends and spends the rest as it comes in. The value of the investment depends entirely on the income of the entity running the scheme to meet or exceed payouts, because no money is actually invested anywhere. It's 100% spent immediately.
Whether you support it or not is irrelevant. People don't like the term "Ponzi scheme" because it is used pejoratively. People attack the use of the term because it makes them feel bad, not because it doesn't apply. Stand up for what you believe in if you believe in it, but don't argue it's something it's not just because a perfectly applicable term makes you uncomfortable.
I can shoot someone in self defense, or I can shoot someone in a cold-blooded murder. That I shot someone is not in dispute, even though the fundamental reason I pulled the trigger is vastly different. Superficially, they may as well be the same thing.
Likewise, pulling money from current investors and spending it immediately (on old investors and then the rest on whatever) is the same in both systems. They are both billed as investments, when that is only true in the most superficial sense. Their aims are completely different, but a Ponzi scheme describes a means, not an end. There is no "account" in either one. Treasury bonds are not investments for the Federal government. They are investments for anyone but the Federal government. They are liabilities to the Fed, because they accrue interest that must be paid by the Fed.
Putting money from your left pocket into your right, an IOU from your right pocket into your left, and then spending the money in your right pocket does not an investment make. It may be beneficial for as long as income outweighs payments + interest, but if anything happens to income the bill will eventually come due in an amount larger than can be paid. When economic times are good, the safety net works. If there is any extended period of bad economic times, the safety net fails at the time it's needed most. That's the problem with the current Social Security system, and why it should not be set up as a Ponzi scheme if people want it to continue to function in extended bad times.
The Great Depression is what spawned it, and it was supposed to stop another one from impoverishing people at risk. The problem is, as currently constituted, that's exactly when Social Security would fail.
It's a scam in the sense you can receive health care, social security and various other benefits from your participation and the money invested is used to pay for various government services. So yeah it's a huge scam isn't it? The US should be more like libertarian Somalia.
If the owner was running a scam then he deserves to be caught. My own opinion is the finances would have been a lot more transparent if there wasn't a US ban on online gambling. If the ban wasn't there there would be no reason to set up fake florists and other companies worldwide to handle payment processing from US gamers. Of course they shouldn't have been trying to attract US players in the first place but I'm guessing the financial reward to do so plus the fact their operations were outside the US meant they thought they could get away with it.
they are just trying to protect US casinos from being destroyed by online casinos, which still will happen. The casino lobbyists seem quite effective so far.
Do you know, all those people who are holding most of their money in T-Bills, what they will be called in maybe just 2 years?
Bankrupt.
Just because something is popular, doesn't make it a good investment. In fact it makes it a lousy investment because all of the good news have been priced into that long time ago AND because the US economy is dying, so there is no way to pay that shit back, that's why it's mostly short term debt, that other nations hold. China holds mostly 3-12 months t-bills, not long term bonds.
It is just a bunch of IOUs. And just like the Federal reserve note - an IOU to pay gold, it doesn't pay anything back.
You take your 42 dollars to the Federal reserve bank and ask for an ounce of gold. See how that works out for you. USA has defaulted on its obligations in 1971. It is defaulting on its currency all the time, and it will default on its debt too, by printing more of that defaulted currency.
Do you know the REAL millionaires, where their money is? Gold. Dividend paying stocks of real producing companies, that are not located in countries, that are moving towards Marxism rather than away from it.
SS is not an insurance program and never was. It's a transfer program that is based on willingness and ability of future generations to pay YOUR debts. That's a ponzi scam.
An insurance program that is legitimate, requires to have assets that are worth something. It requires real investments, not investing into another ponzi scheme - the US t-bill or Federal reserve note.
When an agency lowers the rating of sovereign debt, it really lowers the rating of your CURRENCY, because in case of USA, it can print money no problem. So the real ratings that are going down are the ratings of the currency, and rating of the debt is just a consequence of that.
As to Ronald Reagan - you are such a moron. The guy perpetrated the SS ponzi scam ever further, by increasing taxes, as I said before, and will give this FACT
FACT and DATA
right here again:
In 1984 the payroll tax was raised from 10.8 to 11.4% and kept creeping up. They increased the amount of income subject to tax from 32400USD to 37800USD in one year (16.6%). So SS was raised in total by over 20% in one year. Also SS was originally (in 40s and 50s) paid by employees, not by self employed. However self employed didn't have to pay employer payroll portion of the tax. In 1983 they started collecting the "employer" payroll portion of the tax, so the SS tax went up from 6.8% to 14% 106% increase in one year. This + the SS tax increase of 16.6% described above, the effective rate of tax increase on self employed individuals was 140% tax hike in one year, and kept getting worse.
Reagan also imposed income taxes on SS benefits for higher earning individuals, which is means testing and reduction in benefits.
Reagan basically cut SS benefits for higher income people by applying income tax to SS benefits, while increasing taxes on higher income people by 140%.
You can't handle the truth.
Given the answers to your questions (in particular your last answer) - whose right/responsibility should it be?
USPS - it was not solvent much before Reagan.
Didn't you know that USPS used to do delivery 2 times a day, every day?
That's right. Twice a day. They stopped it because they couldn't finance it anymore. That was way before Reagan.
USPS was always destined for a catastrophic failure, because the prices of stamps are directed by government, which tries to hide the rate of real inflation it creates by money printing.
Also USPS social obligations are ridiculous, so with the prices of stamps being fixed, inflation going up and labor costs piling up, it was inevitable that it would go bankrupt.
Now the Congress may decide to keep this zombie program continue, but it's obviously not providing enough value if it's this unprofitable that it can't sustain itself.
Those jobs must be eliminated because they are unproductive, if they can't generate enough profit to at least maintain itself.
They are going to force the remaining productive workers to support these unproductive ones, but what else is new in the land of government?
You can't handle the truth.
The questions you have to ask yourself are these:
Is it the governments right or responsibility to do these things?
If these things are not done by Social Security how will they get done?
Do you want to live in a society where these protections are not provided?
1. There is no authorization by people to government for these things in the Constitution of USA, like it or not. It's unconstitutional, as I showed in the comments above and thus gov't has neither right nor responsibility to do this, and if it does this, it's against the law.
2. People must not be robbed of their income, and so income/payroll/SS/Medicare taxes must not exist, and that would allow people to have their own investments. Free people should take care of themselves.
3. Yes. I want to live in a society that does not force me into its collective programs. I don't want to live in a society that forces me into ponzi scams to promote Marxist ideals. AFAIC the less coercion by gov't there is, the happier I am because the freer I am. Individual rights must trump the collective rights every single time. The smallest minority is an individual.
You can't handle the truth.
The aims are irrelevant.
There is no difference between funding any ponzi scam and funding SS.
The important part is the reality, not the intentions.
There should be no wealth 'redistribution', it's destructive to the economy as it moves investment capital out of hands that can invest and produce and it moves it into hands that do not invest and produce but instead consume without production, which is a net negative for the economy.
People must have all of their income, no income taxes, no payroll taxes, no SS or Medicare taxes and thus people are free individuals, who must support themselves and they DO. In China there is no SS or Medicare, their savings are now highest in the world. USA didn't use to have these programs and income taxes didn't exist and USA became the largest creditor/producer nation in the world and people came to USA for freedoms from government coercion. Now look at it.
SS is a ponzi scam regardless of the intentions, because that's how it's funded.
You can't handle the truth.
AFAIC it was a ponzi scam from the start, I gave facts and data as to why that is in this comment (http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2437746&cid=37462432)
It was a court case and SCOTUS didn't bother to make a judgment. He basically said: "gov't says that SS taxes are not earmarked for anything, thus they are right, and I am not going to make a ruling" - and somehow this is supposed to be Constitutional?
Obviously it's not Constitutional, the judge never found it to be Constitutional, the case should have been thrown out and SS taxes should have been found unconstitutional. But SCOTUS hasn't been an independent body for at least as long as there is Federal reserve (also not an independent body.)
--
I am not arguing with you though, just pointing out that SS taxes were never found to be Constitutional from the start.
You can't handle the truth.
First of all: SS taxes are unconstitutional (http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2437746&cid=37462432)
it's in a court decision that they are not going to make a ruling on whether the SS taxes are actually Constitutional or not, so it's definitely up for grabs, but it's clearly NOT declared to be Constitutional.
Secondly: SS is a ponzi scam based on the way it is funded, not based on intentions or any political motivations.
The manner in which the program is funded makes it indistinguishable from a ponzi scam, which is all that's important here.
You can't handle the truth.
It never had a trust fund.
Government explicitly argued that SS taxes were NOT going into any trust fund, that they were NOT earmarked for anything from the get go, that's the only way they could even start that program.
SS taxes are unconstitutional (http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2437746&cid=37462432)
it's in a court decision that they are not going to make a ruling on whether the SS taxes are actually Constitutional or not, so it's definitely up for grabs, but it's clearly NOT declared to be Constitutional.
But the point of that case was to prove to the SCOTUS that SS NEVER HAD a trust fund :)
People don't get this simple thing, the only way that SS could ever pass was for gov't to argue it was NOT SS.
That's because SS payroll tax is an illegal (unconstitutional) way to do direct and illegal transfer of property from employer to employee.
You can't handle the truth.
Of-course it's a ponzi scam, and was from the very first monthly payment.
The first monthly payment was issued on January 31, 1940 to Ida May Fuller of Ludlow, Vermont. In 1937, 1938 and 1939 she paid a total of $24.75 into the Social Security System. Her first check was for $22.54. After her second check, Fuller already had received more than she contributed over the three-year period. She lived to be 100 and collected a total of $22,888.92.
You can't even PRETEND that it was not a ponzi scam with this nonsense.
Pay 25 dollars into the program and get 23K out of it over decades?
Great "investment".
But as I said as well:
It never had a trust fund.
Government explicitly argued that SS taxes were NOT going into any trust fund, that they were NOT earmarked for anything from the get go, that's the only way they could even start that program.
SS taxes are unconstitutional (http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2437746&cid=37462432)
it's in a court decision that they are not going to make a ruling on whether the SS taxes are actually Constitutional or not, so it's definitely up for grabs, but it's clearly NOT declared to be Constitutional.
But the point of that case was to prove to the SCOTUS that SS NEVER HAD a trust fund :)
People don't get this simple thing, the only way that SS could ever pass was for gov't to argue it was NOT SS.
That's because SS payroll tax is an illegal (unconstitutional) way to do direct and illegal transfer of property from employer to employee.
You can't handle the truth.
Oh, no.
It's a scam because you are forcing the unborn children into it, to pay your expenses.
Here is little history:
The first monthly payment was issued on January 31, 1940 to Ida May Fuller of Ludlow, Vermont. In 1937, 1938 and 1939 she paid a total of $24.75 into the Social Security System. Her first check was for $22.54. After her second check, Fuller already had received more than she contributed over the three-year period. She lived to be 100 and collected a total of $22,888.92.
You can't even PRETEND that it was not a ponzi scam with this nonsense.
You can't handle the truth.
SS is basically like a typical standard financial product: a fixed annuity with insurance premiums.
- they called it premiums to make it LOOK like an insurance program, but those were NEVER premiums.
The gov't had to argue specifically that SS taxes were NOT premiums, were not earmarked for any specific purpose and there was not fund, they had to argue this in front of SCOTUS, who unfortunately was just a puppet in the hands of the government.
So I give this case as an example, and the important part of the ruling is there
(http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2437746&cid=37462432)
SS is unconstitutional, it's funded like a ponzi scam and it never had any trust fund by government argument that was used to pass it.
it just invests in US treasury bonds. This is pretty much a guarantee of a low rate of return.
- bonds are a guarantee that you will have inflation destroy your investment, because USA prints money and is not on any gold standard, so US debt is worthless because US Federal reserve note is worthless.
And saying that t-bills are investment?
It's like writing an check to yourself for a million dollars and saying you are a 'millionaire', but you are not. That check is an asset and a liability at the same time. And it transfers the payment from you to the next generation (what a way to SCREW YOUR CHILDREN.)
You can't handle the truth.
Fortunately governments are not so insane as to deny people access to welfare on that basis and it is most certainly irrelevant now given how long most welfare systems across the world have been in existence.
I know that you CAN pretend, but it doesn't work to pretend, you cannot make something into something it is not by pretending.
Ever since the beginning of payouts, the amount of money that subsequent payers were paying into the scam was more than people who came before them, and the amount of money that was paid out, was eventually cut a number of times, people were means tested.
Here is how Ronald Reagan "saved" SS ponzi scam by more benefit cuts and more tax hikes:
------
In 1984 the payroll tax was raised from 10.8 to 11.4% and kept creeping up. They increased the amount of income subject to tax from 32400USD to 37800USD in one year (16.6%). So SS was raised in total by over 20% in one year. Also SS was originally (in 40s and 50s) paid by employees, not by self employed. However self employed didn't have to pay employer payroll portion of the tax. In 1983 they started collecting the "employer" payroll portion of the tax, so the SS tax went up from 6.8% to 14% 106% increase in one year. This + the SS tax increase of 16.6% described above, the effective rate of tax increase on self employed individuals was 140% tax hike in one year, and kept getting worse.
Reagan also imposed income taxes on SS benefits for higher earning individuals, which is means testing and reduction in benefits.
Reagan basically cut SS benefits for higher income people by applying income tax to SS benefits, while increasing taxes on higher income people by 140%.
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So you can pretend all you want, but people are paying more and more percentage wise and in absolute dollars, they are getting less and less out of it.
Another important point is to understand that SS is unconstitutional, (http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2437746&cid=37462432)
the gov't argued that SS tax payments are not going to any fund, specifically to avoid the Constitutionality of direct illegal fund transfer from employer to employee. This means there was never a fund based on the case that was left undecided, as the judge said:
Of-course the judge in the Supreme Court was very lazy, he didn't care (*was complicit*) and wrote this: The argument for the respondent is that the provisions of the two titles dovetail in such a way as to Justify the conclusion that Congress would have been unwilling to pass one without the other. The argument for petitioners is that the tax moneys are not earmarked, and that Congress is at liberty to spend them as it will. The usual separability clause is embodied in the act. ' 1103. [cornell.edu]
We find it unnecessary to make a choice between the arguments, and so leave the question open.
Yet another important point (maybe not to you) is the entire morality of shifting at this point 17 Trillion dollars of payments that were paid out that never were paid into the system upon the children who are young or not even born yet.
That's right, 17 Trillion dollars was paid out more than was taken in by the system.
That's not JUST a ponzi scam, that's also money destruction - debt that is accumulated must be paid out and with interest. So it's a ponzi scam that is perpetrated upon people, not even born yet, who are forced into this and will get nothing out of it but a broken economy and society.
17 Trillion dollars were transfered via debt from the past to the future, I believe the future may not be willing to pay this.
To keep SS going right now they'll have to raise taxes on it, just like Reagan did. I hope you like paying more taxes into ponzi scams.
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Last point: if it were an honest insurance program, with actual trust funds, assets, investments, the participation would not have to been mandatory.
Any voluntary participation in a pension program is not a problem, the problem is when an entire nation is forced into ONE AND THE SAME program.
One single monopoly system to keep the pension payments going.
One single place for politicians to get their money for their space programs and wars and bank bail outs.
Good luck with your pretending.
You can't handle the truth.
I think part of the point is that it hasn't "gone missing" it was, rather, "in the wrong place" to a degree of federal criminality.
www.nodicerpg.com - Some RP stuff for free, some not so for free, but still cheap.
Not enough money to cover deposits. Highly paid executives. The only difference is that it is the depositors gambling with the money NOT the compnay.
Sig (appended to the end of comments you post, 120 chars)
Try again, Social Security still brings in more money than it spends each month. The trust fund has been used to fun general government not the other way around.
A Federal Reserve Note is *not* "an IOU to pay gold". It's fiat money, and has no inherent value.
But, you don't have to believe me, you can read it for yourself on the Federal Reserve's web site: "And, at the base of the financial system, with the abandonment of gold convertibility in the 1930s, legal tender became backed--if that is the proper term--by the fiat of the state." - http://www.federalreserve.gov/boarddocs/speeches/2002/200201163/default.htm
The site used to have a FAQ page that explicitly addressed this, but it appears to have vanished. You can, however, search for "fiat money" on it, and find all kinds of interesting things.
A Federal Reserve Note is *not* "an IOU to pay gold". It's fiat money, and has no inherent value.
- redundant.
That's what most of my comment said.
In 1971 Nixon took US dollar and said - now it's just a piece of paper.
Why, why are you commenting to me with something I said as if you have something original there?
You can't handle the truth.
The fact that you confuse a "T-Bill" with a Treasury Bond shows that you don't have the necessary understanding to carry on this conversation, roman_mir. That you think a Federal Reserve Note is a "promise to pay gold" shows you have been reading crazy LaRouchie pamphlets you must have found on the bus.
You've got to get away from the AM radio and Fox News for just a little while. You are becoming as misinformed as most of the Americans who consider themselves "conservative".
You are welcome on my lawn.
By this definition JP Morgan, Goldman and the rest should be shut down
See http://maxkeiser.com/2011/09/21/by-this-definition-jp-morgan-goldman-and-the-rest-should-be-shut-down/
For the same reason that China and practically every government in the world is investing in the federal government:
It's the most secure investment in the world. That's why everybody buys them.
They don't have to "beat inflation" they are barely paying anything at the moment. Countries invest in them because they are secure, not because they are profitable. They're like putting money in the bank.
You are welcome on my lawn.
I am not confusing t-bills and bonds. Fed is likely going to buy 1.7Trillion worth of long term bonds, but most of the US debt that Chinese hold is t-bills, 3 months.
Federal reserve notes USED to be notes - IOUs that one could redeem for gold at Federal reserve bank.
In fact the original Federal reserve bank set a HIGHER standard for amount of gold reserve than any other bank at the time. So it was a STRONGER gold standard, when Fed was introduced. Of-course Nixon completely defaulted on the promise to pay gold for Federal reserve note, when the French decided to get their money out of the notes.
So all of your little comments there are complete nonsense, and that's why you are replying to my comments and not making any useful ones of your own.
You can't handle the truth.
Of course it is. Every security is an IOU. Every stock, every bond. The US Treasury Bond happens to be the most secure security in the world.
That's why so many countries put their money in them.
Of course it's "ours". Who else's could it be? Here in the United States, the government is us.
You are welcome on my lawn.
For the same reason that China and practically every government in the world is investing in the federal government:
- yes. The same reason - misunderstanding of basic economics.
It's the most secure investment in the world. That's why everybody buys them.
- you can't have something that 'everybody buys' being the most secure.
But you can have a bubble in it.
They don't have to "beat inflation" they are barely paying anything at the moment. Countries invest in them because they are secure, not because they are profitable. They're like putting money in the bank.
- ooooh, they are paying.
They are paying negative real interest rates with inflation being over 11%
You can't handle the truth.
I find it mildly amusing that, from the stories I read: ...and now the US government accuses THEM of a ponzi scheme? Gee, I wonder why they had financial shortfalls... (not to say that fulltilt's management didn't screw up - they probably did, but not to the extent they are being accused).
- The US government has been seizing fulltilt funds for some time prior to Black Friday (something that fulltilt just worked through)
- The US government shut down their payment processors, so for a long time, it was impossible for Fulltilt to access player accounts for deposits. Fulltilt made the questionable of just crediting players the money they "deposited" thinking they'd get the money later. They were in the process of collecting (though they not were nowhere near finished) when black friday hit and they were shut down completely.
- The agreement they were forced to sign with the US gov in order to get their domain name back after Black Friday, basically means they cannot go after funds US players owe them as I understand it.
That's some nerve... *cough*social security*cough*
Now this I'd agree with. I don't think there's anything wrong with the mechanism or official aims of SS, but the current implementation, with the cap at (IIRC) $106,000 is ridiculous. As is the fact that multimillionaires get their SS payments at retirement age. I say if someone's got seven houses and a pension or investment payouts equal to or greater than (for example) twice the average income level in the states, they don't need to get their payouts. Those payouts should go to the people who for whatever reason were not able to build their own safety net.
The CB App. What's your 20?
Again, allow me to reiterate the things you are incorrectly conflating:
capital gains
earned income
wealth
job creation
the stock market
dividends
BASEBALL
and TAXES.
You had claimed that you were being "double taxed" on corporate profits that you received that had already been taxed.
Now you're conflating that with a baseball. Another weird tangent from you.
Then you went on about how stock price is linked to corporate profits. When I showed you a company with a high stock price and NO PROFITS you claimed it you were talking about some kind of possibly expected future profits (but not actual profits that can be identified today).
Again, another weird tangent from you that has NOTHING to do with your ORIGINAL claim of being "double taxed". Or baseball.
If it really is your money then you can go in and take it.
Since you cannot, it is not your money.
Therefore, when you do receive it, it will be taxed.
but a Ponzi scheme describes a means, not an end
No, the term "Ponzi scheme" carries with it the implication of intent to defraud. I recognize the similarities in their mechanisms as you outline, but to call them the same thing would be similar to calling any vegetarian a Nazi because Hitler was a vegetarian. (Yay for Godwin!)
I'm not saying there aren't things I'd change about SS if I were in charge, but the general idea--having everyone pay into a pool so that people who can't build their own safety net aren't discarded at the end of their working lives--is a good one in my book. Honestly, the only thing I'd change is to increase the cap on how much rich people contribute and and reduce the payouts to those who don't need it come retirement age in order to ensure that it does not have to be funded by the printing of money.
The CB App. What's your 20?
The "fraud" part is where politicians call it something it's not, namely a retirement investment account. It is no more an investment or an account than a Ponzi scheme is. It has been described and sold that way for basically the entire history of the program though. The "account" balance is set, changed, or negated entirely at the whim of Congress, and if revenues are outstripped by payments all those "profits" will disappear.
At least you're honest about supporting "To each according to his needs, from each according to his means." Most people are not so willing to stand up quite so clearly for it.
I've always found it interesting that time is counted only one way by the IRS: to increase tax payments.
If you trade your time for money, they consider your time to be worth nothing. When you trade your time for time, both parties are considered to have the income of the market value of the other's time, while their own cannot be deducted from income at that same market rate.
Either time has value, or it doesn't. The Federal government wants to have its cake and eat it too.
If time does have value though, it would make it far more difficult for them to tax wages, and that they will never allow regardless of how hypocritical it is to operate in the way they do.
Um isn't this exactly what banks do?
They take in say 300 Million, but only hold onto say 50 Million, and then get to play the stock market with the other 250 Million?
I thought this was standard operating procedure for businesses?
As I understand, at least with banks, there is regulation to say how much you have to actually keep, and with deregulation that ratio got so low, that they were playing with like 297 Million and only keeping 3 Million in reserve, so when things went south, they really went south.
Anyway, I know they aren't a bank, maybe that's the problem.
But there's still some fishy business going on from the owners of the site. If you read some similar articles online, you'll see that the real problem here is the distribution of the money from the site to the owners or shareholders. Furst received 12 million. Lederer received 38 million. Ferguson received 24 million, and so on. Full Tilt's defense in this whole thing is "In a statement in August, Full Tilt acknowledged that it was having problems processing player money and said it lost $115 million to government seizure and $42 million it says was stolen by a third-party payment processor. (Taken from a WSJ article with some more details)
Well that's fine, but what about the other 200 million of player funds - where did that go? If the government did in fact seize over 115 million dollars, then they might have a legitimate excuse here - but only for that portion of the missing money. In this case, they should still have 275 million in the bank at a minimum, to account for 390 million in player funds - correct? If the payment processor actually scammed them out of 42 million, then it shouldn't be coming out the pockets of the player money, it should be returned from the shareholder / owner proceeds. The numbers just don't add up - even if you take the government seizure out of the equation there's still too much unaccounted for.
Maybe this wasn't always intended as a ponzi scheme - the guys that started the site had the intention of setting up a legitimate site. The government started cracking down and seizing money - so maybe the owners decided to grab a big chuck of the player money and siphon it off to themselves before the government got the rest. Maybe the 390 million in player assets include hundreds of millions of the equivalent of counterfeit money - Full Tilt dollars created without any real dollars going into the bank accounts (by the owners, or programmers). Either way, the people getting screwed here aren't getting it as a result of the government, there's a lot of malicious accounting and action taken by Full Tilt here.
Global warming and other natural disasters are a direct effect of the shrinking number of pirates - Gospel of the FSM
One thing they are failing to remember is that there is a rake taken almost every hand/tournament entry. Nearing 10% of tournaments entered or hands played (for cash games). They don't need cash on hand like someone said except for the money in play that can be extracted. My guess is that the bankrolls of players is around $60 million and the rest (that has slowly trickled to the business owners) is the profits from the RAKE!! Its not that difficult to understand, someone missed this completely with these charges/summary. But then again it is slashdot and why not try to mislead the readers a little bit. Not as bad as the US government trying to get their hand into online poker through legal punishment.
They'd have to have been regulated as a bank, as well.
And I'm pretty sure that banks aren't allowed to deal poker.
It does when the account you're writing against is a trust fund and you're its executor, not its beneficiary.
> is robbing your children and grandchildren
No it isn't. Not any more than it robbed me to pay my parents and grandparents. Because it will pay me back more than I put in, too. And it will pay my descendants more than they pay in as well.
No robbery there. Just cautious investment in the biggest, most stable mutual fund in the universe.
So you are for taking money away from those, who don't need the SS at all, and reducing their benefits, so that's direct mandatory subsidy from some people in the country to some other people, and you think that's a good policy?
You think that taking money away from people who invest it, because they are not spending it, and thus they are growing the wealth of economy by producing stuff via investments and giving this money to people who spend it on produced goods is a good thing for economy?
You don't see that it is a net loss for economy to take investment capital, that would have been used for production and giving it to people who didn't produce enough to fund their own consumption, so they would spend this money on consumption, and you don't see the net negative economic result?
You don't see that you just want to take a failing ponzi scheme and extend it by worsening the situation of people, who are paying into it, who shouldn't be in it, and you think this magically changes the ponzi scheme into a non-ponzi scheme?
Sure, you can do all those things. Reagan did. He increased taxes and did means testing. He increased taxes on everybody by 20% and on high earners by 140% and he reduced payments of benefits to high earners and he increased the cap. But all this does is it pushes the eventual crash of the scheme into the future, but it doesn't change the ponzi scheme into a non-ponzi scheme system.
It's a ponzi scheme based on the way it's funded - direct money transfer that relies on current beneficiaries to be subsidized by current payers. There are no funds. There are no assets. It's all garbage government debt, complete junk.
If you actually CARED about PEOPLE and not about the government SYSTEM, you'd see that people would be much better served if they didn't have to play into ponzi schemes, they didn't have to pay into anything like that, if their work wasn't taxed at all and only consumption was taxed and so they could invest into any business without being punished for any work that they do, for any under-consumption and resulting savings and production.
You are not really addressing the problem of people and their economy, you are just interested in extending the existing system into some indeterminate future. But the future is very determinate, it's coming and it's a dollar collapse.
You can't handle the truth.
I must have been thinking of Medicare, since Medicare switched to "no opt-out" in the 1980s. From page 5-16:
I still think opt-out is impossible for private sector workers at least for now. There are, however, a few specific types of income which are exempt; gory details in a table starting on page 30 of http://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/p15.pdf.
The Social Security system is not a Ponzi scheme. It is not an investment per se, as you've pointed out; it's simply a wealth redistribution system. However, because the payout is pre-determined based on your contribution, and because the government sticks to their payout promises, calling it an "investment" softens the blow of its being a mandatory contribution. It's a sales point.
You can argue that a wealth redistribution system is intrinsically bad, and I'd disagree, but we could certainly have a spirited debate about it.
You could argue that there are better ways to implement Social Security, assuming that you even accept its existence, and I'd agree that there are things that need to be tweaked. While we may not have the same end model, we could have a spirited debate about it.
You could argue that mandatory participation is bad policy, and I'd disagree, but we could certainly have a spirited debate about it.
But just calling it a Ponzi scheme is disingenuous. Doing so is like pulling a mini-Godwin, and it makes it clear that there's no room for discussion in your mind. I don't know why I'm even engaging in this conversation, but I sense that somewhere beneath all that fear and hatred, there's a rational being.
Here's the thing:
The CB App. What's your 20?
Well, SS did once have a trust fund on paper, and now it doesn't (spent by Reagan, Bush, Clinton). Of course since the trust fund was government securities, the whole thing was kind of afarce to begin with.
That's different from what I think you're referring to, which is that SS never made a legal committment that you'll get paid - congress can change its mind about that at any time (and will have to, if we don't change course soon).
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
No, not at all, because SS has no assets (well, none of economic value). You pay money to your grandparents, and SS merely directs the flow. You'll get paid by your grandkids (if SS lives that long) and SS will merely direct the flow. This is exactly the sort of scheem that made Madoff famous.
Also, Social Security is much less "stable" than government securities, and offers much less return, so it's a crappy deal as a participant.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
Thanks for the patronizing epigraph, and it's obvious you believe no person can form his own set of convictions similar to mine based on reasoning, but let's look at the substance.
The Social Security system is not a Ponzi scheme. It is not an investment per se, as you've pointed out; it's simply a wealth redistribution system. However, because the payout is pre-determined based on your contribution, and because the government sticks to their payout promises, calling it an "investment" softens the blow of its being a mandatory contribution. It's a sales point.
- oh, I am very familiar with the way this was sold.
This was sold as an insurance program, thus they called payments 'premiums'. Of-course they called them premiums in public, while in court they were very specific about the payments being made under general taxation power of Congress, as it would be impossible to push the SS taxes through legally if they were just premiums. First reason being that government cannot force a person to buy a specific product (and it was understood to be Unconstitutional), secondly the direct property (income) transfer from an employer to an employee was also unconstitutional, and the 10th amendment wouldn't let that pass through, the government is basically not authorized to take money from person A to give it directly to person B.
The actual court case, that was decided in front of SCOTUS was:
Helvering v. Davis, 301 U.S. 619 (1937), decided on the same day as Steward, upheld the program because "The proceeds of both [employee and employer] taxes are to be paid into the Treasury like internal-revenue taxes generally, and are not earmarked in any way". That is, the Social Security Tax was constitutional as a mere exercise of Congress's general taxation powers. - the gov't argued that SS payments are not earmarked, not actually going to be used for any purpose, but are only collected under general taxation powers of Congress.
Here is a bit more detail from it, that is very relevant:
The argument for the respondent is that the provisions of the two titles dovetail in such a way as to Justify the conclusion that Congress would have been unwilling to pass one without the other. The argument for petitioners is that the tax moneys are not earmarked, and that Congress is at liberty to spend them as it will. The usual separability clause is embodied in the act. ' 1103.
We find it unnecessary to make a choice between the arguments, and so leave the question open.
They were four Justices: Pierce Butler, James Clark McReynolds, George Sutherland, and Willis Van Devanter who dissented on this case as well, declaring that the decision was giving Congress powers it was unauthorized to have.
So that's just to get the Constitutionality of this out of the way - it was never found to be Constitutional, instead the issue was sidestepped, as the government LIED to the court (and the court was complicit in buying this argument obviously, that the SS taxes were not earmarked for any particular purpose.)
Now you have to admit, that saying that taxes are not earmarked is not the same as saying that taxes go into any specific fund, and obviously the SS money was used in the Space Race and in Wars quite ways that were just cavalier. There was never any asset that was bought with the money, the most that the government did was put bonds or at some point T-bills into this so called fund, but that's just an accounting gimmick, because T-bills cost nothing to print.
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Now to the question of SS being a ponzi scheme. Given that there was never a fund with money in it (as was argued by the government that there wouldn't be), let's look at the following evidence:
The first monthly payment was issued on January 31, 1940 to Ida May Fuller of Ludlow, Vermont. In 1937, 1938 and 1939 she paid
You can't handle the truth.
Your question is a re-statement of the last sentence of my post.
First, you responded as if I support Social Security which implies that you didn't bother to read my post in detail and/or didn't understand it.
(1) That's an answer. Ok. I didn't even bother to look at your reasoning because I agree.
(2) This is not an answer. You've decided to answer a completely unrelated question to the one I posed. The question was: How will these problems be solved if not by Social security? "People must not be robbed...Free people should take care of themselves" are not answers to these. The point is that "taking care of yourself" is not a good situation. You can be ruined by disaster in or out of your control. Which leads to question three, Do you want to live in a society who tosses the unlucky aside to die on the side of the road? Even taking a stronger survival of the fittest (animal) approach there are situations where these problems are completely unrelated to the individual, their choices and preparation. Just concentrating on that situation, do you want to live in a society which leaves the unlucky to die?
(3) This is also an answer. Here's a follow up question: Why do you live in a mixed market country that provides social services? Move to a country that doesn't enforce regulation or collective programs... like... like... like where? I know of no "opt in" governments where you can pick and choose what laws/programs to abide by. I also don't see how such a system would be different from anarchy. If you want anarchy you could go to an uninhabited island somewhere. Or Somalia maybe.
If your chief concern is freedom. Live out in the woods. Farm. You can do anything you want. Complete freedom.
Obviously this isn't what you want. My point is that you can't just yell about freedom without reason. If you want all the benefits of society you have to have a government and that government's power can't be based on your personal agreement to it's programs.
Also I'd like to know what your opinion would be if your house burned down, you were laid off, all your investments vanished and you were diagnosed with cancer all in one week. Sure, it's ridiculously unlikely. But vaguely possible. Certainly one of those things could happen any day now. Would you still be so averse to all these programs that would help you?
You can go ahead and say you'd still rather be in such a country and that you would starve on the street and be happy to live in a free country. But I don't think you really would. I think you'd be angry at a society that abandoned you despite you doing your best.
This has nothing to do with government, the best time for middle class is when the government does the least amount of damage to undermine the economy and when businesses are allowed to compete on merit of market vote and not on any preferential treatment by the power of government intervention.
Thanks for the response. While I don't have time today to go into everything you wrote, I think this statement is a key difference between my viewpoint and yours. You might call it opinion, but regardless of the theoretical merits of your argument, there are millenia of actuarial data on the matter. Money begets money. Unless someone does something amazingly unselfish and bequeaths their wealth to an organization that benefits the public good, or unless they do something really stupid, that money will remain concentrated in a few pockets and will be frittered away on nothing. For every Andrew Carnegie, there are a thousand Paris Hiltons. If you call it "stealing from the rich", then there's obviously no arguing with you. But just in case, let's try calling it something else: non-denominational tithing. Or an investment in your fellow human being. Or an insurance policy against the collapse of our society. Rich people get rich on the backs of mountains of people who work hard their whole lives for little gain; they bear some responsibility for ensuring that the least of their brothers are not cast out in the cold when they become aged or infirm. And the only agent for that mechanism which is committed not to exclude based on factors such as race, gender, religion, sexual preference nor profit factor is the government. The government is not the cure for all ails, but for some things, it significantly outshines all other solutions.
The CB App. What's your 20?
I answered to a similar question, so no point repeating.
As far as 'Paris Hilton' vs whatever, you can't pick and choose. There is no authority for you to pick and choose what is 'good' vs what is 'bad'. That's for the market to decide and shouldn't be in the hands of anybody, especially the political elite to decide. The only real votes are dollar votes.
You can't handle the truth.