• meeeeetch@lemmy.world
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    1 day 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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        1 day 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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          22 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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      1 day 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.