If Social Security is a Ponzi, so are ALL investments, because each is based on the same thing: Giving someone money to access more money from more people.

There are many basic critical differences between SS and Ponzis, several of which are related:

1) Unlike Ponzis, SS promises NO short term return. Therefore,

2) Ponzis have a static potential "investor" pool; demographics ensures SSs MUST grow unless/until a generation after US fertility falls below replacement level, and

3) very few Ponzi investors die ere the date of their promised return; HALF of SSs did when it was created, though the number is much lower now.

4) Ponzis do not collect money from "investors" AND their employers.

Social Security is in no sense a Ponzi scheme, hence (once again,) its counterparts in Germany, France, the UK, Canada and Mexico, to name but a few, are doing fine despite larger and longer lived populations than Americas. Put another way: If 5 countries with a GDP of $11.5 trillion can provide social security to 360 million people whose life expectancy is >80, a country with 50% MORE income can provide social security to 50 million LESS people whose life expectancy is 2 years LESS.

Social security systems are only in trouble in places juvenile voters spent a generation demanding MORE benefits for LESS taxes and craven politicians let them have both. Exhibits A and B are the US and Greece, but that is an indictment of purblind incompetence, not welfare states, which are are doing better in all other cases than any alternative on the planet. Sorry, Cannoli, but you are too smart to get away with playing dumb (and channeling my governor DEFINITELY qualifies. )