[quote]orion wrote:
If a tidal wave comes your way, are you interested in who has the most interesting take on it or who has the most accurate one?[/quote]
I don’t disagree with the opinion at all. I actually completely agree. I was just pointing out that his brother’s theory wasn’t really his brother’s.
[quote]lixy wrote:
Bill Roberts wrote:
Magarhe wrote:
Fed reserve issuing money and creating inflation is the biggest Ponzi scheme out.
No, it is not a Ponzi scheme whatsoever… find yourself a credible source giving you a definition of “Ponzi scheme.”
You are using the term as a simple pejorative.
Duh!
But it doesn’t make the analogy any less valid. For banks and social security.[/quote]
Wow, this is a new low for you…
Now you actually have it that statements being completely wrong, even wrong by definition which is as wrong as one can get, “doesn’t make [them] any less valid.”
Actually though that philosophy does fit in extremely well with your posts, so I suppose at least you are philosophically consistent.
Though consistently sound would be much better than consistently whacked… 
[quote]LankyMofo wrote:
It certainly appears that I wasn’t paying attention. The sad part is I’m sure you could find more links if you wanted to.[/quote]
Googling +“Social Security” +“Ponzi Scheme” (both phrases together) results in 36,000 hits.
So I guess this means therover’s brother’s theory isn’t an interesting take at all?[/quote]
Not an original take, maybe, but interesting nonetheless. Mostly interesting that so many people are still merrily throwing their money into the black hole of Social Security, fervently hoping that at least they’ll get their share of the loot before the whole thing collapses, and to hell with their children and grandchildren.
[quote]Varqanir wrote:
Not an original take, maybe, but interesting nonetheless. Mostly interesting that so many people are still merrily throwing their money into the black hole of Social Security, fervently hoping that at least they’ll get their share of the loot before the whole thing collapses, and to hell with their children and grandchildren.[/quote]
Is there a legal way to opt out of SS? I was under the impression that there wasn’t.
[i]There are worse places to be a tax exile than the Bahamas[/]
[quote]LankyMofo wrote:
Varqanir wrote:
Not an original take, maybe, but interesting nonetheless. Mostly interesting that so many people are still merrily throwing their money into the black hole of Social Security, fervently hoping that at least they’ll get their share of the loot before the whole thing collapses, and to hell with their children and grandchildren.
Is there a legal way to opt out of SS? I was under the impression that there wasn’t.[/quote]
Spend at least 330 days a year outside of the United States (preferably in a tax-free jurisdiction like the Bahamas, Monaco or Dubai) and keep your income under about $85,000 a year.
Not only will you be exempt from Social Security, you will also not be liable to any Federal income tax.
[quote]LankyMofo wrote:
A bold statement considering what I value those elbow patches at. Regardless, I wasn’t hearing anyone claim SS was a ponzi scheme until Schiff said it. Maybe he got “his” theory from Schiff, maybe not. [/quote]
Lanky…he was busting them that’s all. I was on the phone with him reading some of the reponses.
It isn’t HIS theory. We were actually hanging out smoking some pot talking about this fuck show and Madoff came up. Then we cracked up about the Ponzi Scheme and how it’s was named after an Italian ( we are Italian) and that it took an Italian to think it up. Well, as the pot seeped in, he blurted out that Social Security was the biggest Ponzi scheme and I said I am going to post it on the T-Nation site.
Wasn’t his ‘theory’ ( shoot, I don’t think he could have ‘theorized’ in his state of mind…it was really good pot !).
Anyway, good to know Schiff and my brother have similar ideas ( maybe Schiff was toking too !!!) HA !!!
Now I am off to California to preach legalizing pot so they can get out of their budget mess !!
[quote]LankyMofo wrote:
Is there a legal way to opt out of SS? I was under the impression that there wasn’t.[/quote]
You know how. When the gov’t figures out that people are making over a certain amount via their pensions, they will start to decrease their SSI benefit until it becomes nil.
I believe this is already starting to happen.
Lanky…not for nothing, but my brother stated he really cannot take you seriously when your avatar is Bob Saget.
Now he has to go eat a bag of cheetos and watch an episode of Full House !!!
Speaking of: Has there ever been anyone as not-funny and boring who has made millions from comedy?
There are some others that have been successful while being not-funny, true, but they were also non-boring.
[quote]therover wrote:
LankyMofo wrote:
A bold statement considering what I value those elbow patches at. Regardless, I wasn’t hearing anyone claim SS was a ponzi scheme until Schiff said it. Maybe he got “his” theory from Schiff, maybe not.
Lanky…he was busting them that’s all. I was on the phone with him reading some of the reponses.
It isn’t HIS theory. We were actually hanging out smoking some pot talking about this fuck show and Madoff came up. Then we cracked up about the Ponzi Scheme and how it’s was named after an Italian ( we are Italian) and that it took an Italian to think it up. Well, as the pot seeped in, he blurted out that Social Security was the biggest Ponzi scheme and I said I am going to post it on the T-Nation site.
Wasn’t his ‘theory’ ( shoot, I don’t think he could have ‘theorized’ in his state of mind…it was really good pot !).
Anyway, good to know Schiff and my brother have similar ideas ( maybe Schiff was toking too !!!) HA !!!
Now I am off to California to preach legalizing pot so they can get out of their budget mess !![/quote]
Lol, fair enough, man.
[quote]therover wrote:
Lanky…not for nothing, but my brother stated he really cannot take you seriously when your avatar is Bob Saget.
Now he has to go eat a bag of cheetos and watch an episode of Full House !!!
[/quote]
Lol, does this brother really exist or is this just what you think?
[quote]Bill Roberts wrote:
Speaking of: Has there ever been anyone as not-funny and boring who has made millions from comedy?
There are some others that have been successful while being not-funny, true, but they were also non-boring.[/quote]
Agreed.
[quote]Varqanir wrote:
[i]There are worse places to be a tax exile than the Bahamas[/]
LankyMofo wrote:
Varqanir wrote:
Not an original take, maybe, but interesting nonetheless. Mostly interesting that so many people are still merrily throwing their money into the black hole of Social Security, fervently hoping that at least they’ll get their share of the loot before the whole thing collapses, and to hell with their children and grandchildren.
Is there a legal way to opt out of SS? I was under the impression that there wasn’t.
Spend at least 330 days a year outside of the United States (preferably in a tax-free jurisdiction like the Bahamas, Monaco or Dubai) and keep your income under about $85,000 a year.
Not only will you be exempt from Social Security, you will also not be liable to any Federal income tax.
[/quote]
The US must be pretty much the only country to tax citizens that live abroad.
Yes, our government is much smarter than say for example the Soviet government was.
The Russians thought that they could fool the people with elections where only, for example, Stalin was on the ballot, and since there was an “election” people would think it legitimate.
Whereas in the US, we let them pick between two candidates that are caused to appear to be the only two that have a real chance (our system is such that people are caused to feel that a vote for any third-or-more candidate “wastes the vote”) where of course both are acceptable to the powers-that-be.
If the Soviets had been equally smart they could have had say a Stalinist party, which say favored taxing vodka, and a Leninist party, which vigorously disagreed by favoring subsidizing it.
Every so many years the people would get to choose between two candidates who of course would both be Communists equally acceptable to the powers-that-be. That would have been much smarter than having only one name on the ballot.
But their government was not as smart as ours in that, it seems. So they only had one name to vote for. Somehow that did not succeed in really fooling anyone.
The Soviets also just prevented their citizens from escaping.
Our government is smarter and lets them live anywhere, but still taxes them.
[quote]Bill Roberts wrote:
Yes, our government is much smarter than the Soviet government was.
The Russians thought that they could fool the people with elections where only, for example, Stalin was on the ballot, and since there was an “election” people would think it legitimate.
Whereas in the US, we let them pick between two candidates that are caused to appear to be the only two that have a real chance (our system is such that people are caused to feel that a vote for any third-or-more candidate "wastes their vote) where both are acceptable to the powers-that-be.
If the Soviets had been equally smart they could have had say a Stalinist party, which favored taxing vodka, and a Leninist party, which favored subsidizing it. Every so many years the people would get to “choose” between two candidates who both were Communists and equally acceptable to the powers-that-be. That would have been much smarter than having only one name on the ballot.
The Soviets also just prevented their citizens from escaping.
Our government is smarter and lets them live anywhere, but still taxes them.[/quote]
Hey, we have 5 socialist parties!
Yeah, you heard that, 5!
You can be a Christian socialist, an environmentally conscious socialist, a social democrat, or even a national socialist or communist!
Once you live less than 180 days in Austria though they will not tax you, and I can leave Austria by falling out of the wrong side of my bed.
Ah Slovakia, and her sweet, sweet flat tax of 19%.
[quote]LankyMofo wrote:
Lol, does this brother really exist or is this just what you think?
[/quote]
He does, although people say we have the same brain ( 8 years apart). He called me and said to write that and I typed it as we were talking. I told him as a joke to register as theroversbrother.
As for the Ponzi scheme/SSI link, I never really thought about it until I was stoned last night !
Me…I liked Laurie Laughlin on the show. I always thought she was a really sweet looking girl.
[quote]Bill Roberts wrote:
Yes, our government is much smarter than say for example the Soviet government was.
The Russians thought that they could fool the people with elections where only, for example, Stalin was on the ballot, and since there was an “election” people would think it legitimate.
Whereas in the US, we let them pick between two candidates that are caused to appear to be the only two that have a real chance (our system is such that people are caused to feel that a vote for any third-or-more candidate “wastes the vote”) where of course both are acceptable to the powers-that-be.
If the Soviets had been equally smart they could have had say a Stalinist party, which say favored taxing vodka, and a Leninist party, which vigorously disagreed by favoring subsidizing it.
Every so many years the people would get to choose between two candidates who of course would both be Communists equally acceptable to the powers-that-be. That would have been much smarter than having only one name on the ballot.
But their government was not as smart as ours in that, it seems. So they only had one name to vote for. Somehow that did not succeed in really fooling anyone.
The Soviets also just prevented their citizens from escaping.
Our government is smarter and lets them live anywhere, but still taxes them.[/quote]
As much as I love the cynicism…
Can’t pretty much anyone vote in primaries in which the field is wide open?
The same method works there too.
Most feel they need to vote for a “front-runner” else their vote is wasted.
They are very conveniently informed who the front runner is.
I recall quite well how, for example, Bill Clinton was endlessly, front-page called the frontrunner for the Democratic nomination for '92 well before there was a single primary election. The media said he was and made him so.
Similarly, why did McCain and Obama win their nominations?
I think most McCain voters voted for him because the wisdom they were absorbing from the atmosphere had it that only he, among Republicans, could win. Any other vote and why, they’d be wasting their vote.
As for Obama, no, it was believed also that Hillary could win, but I am sure that just as with my Stalinist Party / Leninist Party example, either was fully acceptable.
How is this done? Besides achieving where people absorb the desired things from the atmosphere.
The voting system. It is thoroughly known that refusing to accept anything from voters except “yes” on a single name is the means least capable, among voting methods, of weighing and responding to wishes of voters.
But it has the vast virtue over, for example, instant-runoff of making voters feel that they are “wasting their vote” with any candidate but the ones that the atmosphere says are the only potential winners.
True for primary elections also.
It’s not as if McCain won 51% or more of the vote when there was any substantial field. We don’t know he could have won an instant run-off. Actually I think it’s quite questionable that more than perhaps 40% of Republican primary voters found McCain acceptable. In contrast to McCain, some other candidate who might have received only 10% – with votes of those preferring candidates similar to home being split among five differing candidates and thus his being compared with the whole field, not just McCain, and further being greatly penalized by people not wanting to “waste their vote” as they were given reason to believe he could not win – this candidate might have been preferred to McCain by say a 60-40 margin.
The voting system, however, assures that does not happen.
The “we will accept nothing but ‘yes’ for one name” system pretty much guarantees that someone like, say, Duncan Hunter cannot win. Even though I would not be at all surprised if, at the end of the day, more Republican primary voters would have wanted Hunter than McCain. Just as an example.
[quote]Bill Roberts wrote:
Magarhe wrote:
Fed reserve issuing money and creating inflation is the biggest Ponzi scheme out.
No, it is not a Ponzi scheme whatsoever… find yourself a credible source giving you a definition of “Ponzi scheme.”
You are using the term as a simple pejorative.
Duh!
But it doesn’t make the analogy any less valid. For banks and social security.[/quote]
yeah, what he said
true, true
lol that’s a good one
Now obviously it is not a Ponzi scheme, my point is, it isn’t exactly working the way it should/could be working and it is screwing the lot of you. On a grand scale.
Social Security is an arguably ill-advised program. There may be some superficial similarities, but it’s not a Ponzi scheme. It does not promise ludicrous returns that never materialize. TAnd no one is being mislead. here is a set amount of contributions for a set amount of returns that to date have been delivered (until it collapses)
The key characteristic of a ponzi scheme is misleading investors into believing they will make either unrealistic returns or abnormally high short term gains on their investment. And a Ponzi scheme is designed to collapse.
That is what one might get from relying on the quote appearing as the first Google hit (a brief quoted excerpt from Wikipedia) as being the authority. Or if you got it elsewhere, from relying on that source.
What you cite is a mistaken attempt at definition, if you are indeed providing all the information that that attempt states.
Whether a financial operation is a Ponzi scheme or not has nothing inherently to do with amounts of return promised. Rather, it has everything to do with how the payouts are done: from revenues derived from principal put in by the participant and/or return of that principal, or by using principal put in from present and future participants to pay previous ones.
It is typical though for such schemes to obtain ever-expanding clientele by providing extremely attractive returns. But it’s not necessary that an operation do that to be a Ponzi scheme.