You too, can participate in what appears to be a scam...
Hmm.... as in illegal..... ? then, how come:
......
Message 9486781
> Unfortunate people who scrutinize the Social Security trust fund
> discover two facts: It's not there. It's not theirs. But, for the
> rest of us who are rationally ignoring such things, the real
> question is, how are we doing with this retirement fund that
> doesn't exist and we don't own? We're doing surprisingly well.
> We're getting an average return of more than 16.5 percent on our
> employer/employee payroll contributions. If we're eighty-two years
> old. On the other hand, if we're sixty-seven, we're getting about
> 1.4 percent -- a financial coup we could have managed on our own,
> without the help of the federal government, by holding onto our
> Beanie Baby collections a little too long. And if we're age
> twenty-four to sixty-two, we can expect a return of between -0.34
> percent and -1.7 percent, and might be better off leaving the
> money in our old jeans and going through the closet when we
> retire.
>
> Here again we see the genius of Charles Ponzi. Initial payments
> into Social Security were very small. From 1937 to 1949, the
> combined employer/employee payroll tax rate was two percent, and
> this tax was levied on only the first $3,000 of annual income. The
> generation that made these payments then went on to surprise
> demographers, shock their heirs and delight Winnebago dealers by
> taking a really long time to die. The first Social Security
> recipient, Ida M. Fuller of Vermont, retired in 1940 after paying
> Social Security taxes for three years. She and her employer had
> put a total of forty-four dollars into the system. Ms. Fuller
> lived to be 100 and collected $20,933.52 in benefits. Mr. Ponzi
> could have done as well, and been honored for his business savvy,
> if only he had the legal and legislative muscle to create a Ponzi
> scheme that preyed upon the most gullible of all suckers: people
> who haven't been born yet.
......
> And what about the rest of us? We'd have to take responsibility
> for ourselves and maybe even our parents if the Beanie Baby fad is
> really over and Mom and Dad's investment strategy flops. We'd need
> to pay attention, learn things, make difficult decisions. It's far
> more pleasant to slide along in blissful (and rational!) ignorance
> and hope that before we lose our teeth (and shirt) something will
> come up. It did for Charles Ponzi. After he got out of jail, he
> went back to Italy and became a top economic adviser to Benito
> Mussolini.
..............
techstocks.com
btw... The real reason why the Ponzi schemes are outlawed, is because the government despises competition. |
