Re: Big purple digit

David Friedman <ddfr@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
>  archmage@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
 (Nate Edel) wrote:
> > Indeed, no population growth is necessary for social security to go on
> > indefinitely.  Nor is economic growth, although both of them make
affording
> > any given level of benefits much easier.  If both of those were
static, as
> > long as other demographic factors (*) remain constant, then in
priciple you
> > should be able to get some constant level of benefits for a constant
level
> > of taxation.
>
> You could have a sustainable "pyramid" scheme--you might all it a column

> scheme since it's a pyramid that doesn't taper--the same way. Simply pay

> back to each person, on average, as much as he paid in. What makes 
> social security a pyramid scheme in the normal sense is that it started 
> out by paying out much more than the recipients paid in, making it 
> actuarially unsound more or less from the start.

Which completely ignored my general point that it's not an investment or
savings scheme, so the fact that the first generation to receive it(*)
were
largely "free riders" is irrelevant: the basic contract is simply, "take
care of the elderly now, and the next generations will take care of you" -
something which in a less formal manner already existed within many
families
and communities.

(* mostly dead now: how many people who were already retired or retiring
in
the late 1930s are still alive today?)


-- 
Nate Edel                               http://www.cubiclehermit.com/
 preferred email  | 
 is "nate" at the | "I do have a cause, though. It is obscenity.
 posting domain   |  I'm for it." - prologue to "Smut" by Tom Lehrer