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avidiaxyesterday at 9:13 PM1 replyview on HN

How were they mislead?

From day one, Social Security was a "new money pays old money" scheme, the one thing that makes it Ponzi-like.

To be fair, the boomers got screwed in the 1980's SS reform to pay for their parents (but had it sweet before), so maybe this is just paying it forward.


Replies

mothballedyesterday at 9:48 PM

It was specifically sold as 'insurance' to the public around the time it was being passed.

Well except for a short period where that was going to be deliberated on by the courts, where they stopped calling it insurance since SCOTUS indicated this insurance wouldn't be constitutional, so instead they put it under general welfare clause but then changed up their rhetoric immediately after it was found constitutional back to it being insurance again.

Also the people that wrote the bill later admitted they intentionally wrote it in a confusing as way to evade public and judicial scrutiny.