alt Hacker NewsI think the person you were responding to meant ponzi scheme, not pyramid scheme. The first sentence from Wikipedia sounds quite similar to SS
> A Ponzi scheme (/ˈpɒnzi/, Italian: [ˈpontsi]) is a form of fraud that lures investors and pays profits to earlier investors with funds from more recent investors
Just replace investors with tax payers.
it's not a ponzi scheme either. in a ponzi scheme the top of the funnel gets rich off the funds of new investors who are expecting a return. my taxes are not an investment secretly used to make some people rich by fooling newcomers, they're explicitly directly funding the current beneficiaries.