• silence7@slrpnk.netOP
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    1 day ago

    It was always a substitute for paying to maintain your parents or grandparents in retirement. Unless you’re an immigrant, you’ve already been getting it back.

      • meeeeetch@lemmy.world
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        21 hours ago

        The money they paid was so that their parents and grandparents had a little something going into retirement.

          • meeeeetch@lemmy.world
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            14 hours ago

            They’re paid out according to their contributions. But they’re paid with money current workers are paying in. It is technically a ponzi, but was designed to be sustainable instead of promising reckless profits.

            • Yeller_king@reddthat.com
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              10 hours ago

              It’s technically not a ponzi, it’s just a standard pay-as-you-go system which requires some sort of growth in revenues (such as population growth or changes in taxation) to be sustainable.

              A ponzi scheme is fraud that can never pay out what it promised.

        • silence7@slrpnk.netOP
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          15 hours ago

          Exactly. It’s a system that works almost entirely as a pay-as-you-go system, with each generation paying for the retirement of their elders.