How does that compare to Medicaid (the one for poor people, Medicare is for old people,) welfare, food stamps, or any other social program? I pay into all of those, but get nothing out of them.

They're all a great big Ponzi scheme.

Lets use the above example and say I stop working and die at 79. How much am I getting after contributing my whole life? No, I am not opting for a reduced payout.

You think this thread is confusing? Consider Japan. Part of the reason that the govt's popularity is in the 10% range is that, with Japan's dangerously aging population, over the last 30 or 40 years the state-run pension savings scheme has managed to LOSE (or not even keep in the first place) millions of peoples records of how much they paid in. Millions of aging salarymen, who have been putting money in all these years, are suddenly finding the system has no record of their deposits!
Any other country/culture, and they would ahve burned the government buildings by now.

Man that sounds bad. I must admit that I fear something similar as we move to a more digitally based record keeping in most things. "I'm sorry sir, there is no record you were ever born." Some low level IT staffer forgets to put a record in, someone forgets to back up a data base, The Illuminati in concert with China steals the identity of millions of Americans and puts them in a virtual Chinese Re-education camp.

I heard somewhere last week that Madoffs wife took 15 million the day her son turned him in. Anyone know if they found it?

Her son turned him in? I don't know, I just remember hearing she withdrew millions the day before he was arrested. I didn't realize her son turned him in. If she did withdraw money, I believe that makes her complicit. I believe she is anyway, because Bernie also allegedly put the house in her name right before he was arrested, as did that Fuld guy from Lehman Bros (CEO), right before they went down. If that's the case, the wives should definitely be held accountable as well, if there is an investigation. I don't believe you should be able to hide your assests in your spouses name when you do things that might be considered illegal, in order to keep them.

I read she made 2 withdrawals totaling 15 million, one the day before the arrest and one a couple of days before that.

yes sugarpop, they didn't catch him, he admitted to his sons it was all bullshit and he was bust. They ratted him out. May have been a ploy to cover the boy's asses when he knew he would be found out eventually because of the Wall street meltdown. Let the old man take the heat, he was still influential enough to probably not be jailed and even if he was he's a very old man anyway.
So far it's worked... house arrest in a multi-million dollar palace.:rolleyes:

yea, it's pretty sickening isn't it. Too bad the public outrage hasn't had more of an effect, like poor Paris Hilton having to go to jail. IMO, whenever white collar crinimals are caught, all their wealth should be confiscated to make up for their sins, and that would include any wealth transferred to relatives or off-shore banks.

Wow really? Take away everything when they are caught??? What about that whole "due process" and "innocent until proven guilty" thing?

It is hard to stay mad a capitalism when it throws up things like this:

Attachment 21933

No, when they are proven guilty. Sorry I misspoke there. :blush:

Seems like a few more of these are coming out ...

Stanford Ponzi Investigations: 22 Years Old

Barrington firm's assets frozen by feds

Oh and then the story with him starts to unravel.

Did Madoff Buy Any Stock?

The funny thing is that people will actually buy these. I think CNN said they were around $22 each. Just so you can pay someone else and make them rich so you can smash them. Where is sugarpop's outrage on this one? :D

Why would she be outraged?

Because they are not diverting wealth to those that never came up with the idea.:D

Why are you confusing insurance with something completely irrelevant to Madoff? You obviously know the difference. Why are you confusing investment with insurance - two completely different topics?

Thousands of people contribute to insurance and get nothing so that the one gets reimbursement. Madoff was not an insurance company regulated by a state (ie NY). Madoff was an investment banker regulated by the organization gutted by a political agenda: the Security and Exchange Commission.

Nice diversion tom, but you FAIL-ed to answer the question.

The point I was making is that as they change the rules they can justify that SS is solvent when reality is quite different. wacko bean counters...

I accurately defined the game you just played. The discussion is about investements - not about insurance. And not about Social Security. SS also is not investing. You have simply thrown a hand grenade into a discussion that was not about SS and not about insurance.

#1 - You are the one that brought up insurance, not me.
#2 Happy Monkey and I were specifically discussing this EXACT scenario
#3 - Our discussion began back on page 3, with post #45. You sir, are incorrect. No hand grenade. At best you have detected thread drift which is perfectly normal.
#4 - If you don't read or cannot follow a thread and are just going to tailpost on assumptions and attack posters, then please don't comment on my posts. thank you very much.

Ponzi schemes are investment scams. Social Security is insurance. Happy Monkey also defined SS as insurance; not a ponzi scheme. Clodfobble then listed other insurance. Again classicman continues confusing insurance with investments. Like most who contribute, you get a reduced payout because it is insurance.

The topic is investments and Madoff. classicman even discussed a rumored $15million removed by his wife from an investment firm - not an insurance company. classicman also discussed investment firms such as Stanford and Barrington. Why post irrelevant nonsense about insurance?

Social Security is insurance. Get over it. Opting for a reduced payout is acceptable and expected. Insurance has not an investment. Ponzi schemes are investement scams - not insurance.

Stick to the facts without your usual personal attacks. Investments and insurance are two completely different structures no matter how you confuse it with venom. Social Security is insurance - not something to invest in. Is that easy enough for you? Or is this something you learned from clown school?

Tom, are you seriously trying to say that you cannot see there are multiple conversations going on? You conveniently omitted import posts. Some of which were half in jest. None were directed to you. Where is the example that HM laid out? There is also a response from him and another from me. You have taken much of a conversation that didn't include you out of context and added some that has no bearing just to manipulate it into something you can bitch about. That is something only a wacko extremist would do. You don't want to start with the name-calling again do you?

What is your real issue? Are you feeling ignored? Don't answer that, I don't care.
We have gone down the "tit for tat" route too many times. Do you really wanna lose your composure again and start defecating all over the board? Are you next going to call my family nasty names? Is that your goal?

Please put me on ignore and don't comment on my posts.

If you'd like to stay on the subject, Which of the above is not relevant to the conversation? The part where Madoff's wife withdrew 15 Million the same day that he was turned in or the fact that the other was being called a mini-madoff???

He's not wrong, though. You do seem to be figuring out a situation where insurance doesn't pay out, and treating it as a "gotcha". You might as well say "what if I pay for car insurance my whole life and never have an accident?"

As I said before, SS's solvency is based on the ratio of workers to retired people. If it got to the point that solvency required the retirement age to be 80, that would mean that there were enough retired people over 80 to counterbalance all the workers under 80. That would indicate an increase in average lifespan, making the scenario of dying at 79 less likely than under present conditions.

And that brings up a strength that Social Security has over other insurance, and even over investment. What if you live for much longer than the average lifespan? Most insurances in that type of situation would raise your rates. Investments will run out if you live longer than your financial planning anticipates. Social Security keeps paying out as long as there are still people who haven't retired yet.

The solvency of SS is based upon the parameters as you aptly stated. My point was, and still is, that they can embellish, for lack of a better word, the solvency by raising the minimum age at which one receives full benefits.

If they keep the age at 65 (for example) then the solvency is quite different than if they raise the age to say, 80 as in your example. By raising the age they are eliminating many people who have paid money in. This works because, as any amortization tables shows, the rate of death over 65 increases dramatically, thus allowing all the dollars put into the system by those now deceased individuals and spreading it a fewer who remain alive to/after the increased age. Your assumption that it will be based upon a longer life expectancy is not necessarily true. It may and probably will be raised just to keep it solvent.

By increasing the minimum age they effectively reduce the number of recipients while keeping the number of people putting into it. Is it illegal? No. Is it wrong? I certainly think so.

That is my point. If all remains as it is, there will still be money there for all who retire, I guess so. Will it be $1.00 or $100.00 - who knows. The reality is that in order for it to have some measured benefit for most recipients, the rules of the game are going to be changed.

The best thing they can do for it is raise the ceiling for contribution limits from around 95k or what ever that is, up to 110k.

It only has to be raised if life expectancy increases. Solvency is not a problem unless there are too many retired people for the working population to support. And, as TheMercenary pointed out, there are much easier (both politically and practically) ways of increasing funding than raising the retirement age. Of the three methods I mentioned (rates/retirement ages/upper tax limits), the retirement age is the one I would expect to, politically, need a life expectancy justification.

Raising the retirement age to 80 simply could not happen, politically, unless people were regularly living well past it. Raising the maximum yearly limit would, comparatively, be a cinch.

I agree. The most pressing issue will be as the baby boomers come of age. I know this is starting to a very small degree, but in the next 15 to 20 years there will be a greater disparity in the number of recipients versus that which has been put in by the working population charged with supporting them.

All that is predictable and easily planned for by actuarials. SS problems are trivial. Solutions include increasing income levels of contributions (to compensate for inflation), reduce benefits, or simply do what Reagan did. He hyped tax cuts while raising SS contributions percentages.

Difference between investment scams (ponzi schemes) and insurance? Insurance problems are easily predicted in advance and easily corrected. Investments scams, (Enron, LTCM, AIG, Bear Stearns, Madoff, etc) are not easily found until major damage occurs too late. Why was AIG careful to keep risky investments away from insurance regulator oversight? In today's America, investment scams became easy by something that politicians called deregulation.

Just another reason why investment finance needs heavy oversight by an SEC not subverted by a White House. SS was never going to deplete both the Federal Reserve and Treasury. Investment scams have almost done that in only a year AND may have put insurance companies even at risk.

Discussing insurance is nonsense when people such as AIG and Madoff are a far greater threat to the American economy.

The thing that annoys me most about Madoff is that he ruined it all before I could get in on the game.

I could have been rich, rich I tell you!

Steven Greenspan, a psychiatry professor at the U of CO wrote a book about the factors and psychology of a scam. After his book (Annals of Gullibility)was published, "with supreme irony", he lost half his retirement investments with Madoff. Greenspan explains the Madoff ponzi scheme AND Saddam's WMDs.

Greenspan also noted the scam is particularly powerful within an ethnic or religious group as Ponzi demonstrated in 1920 Italy. Religious people particularly because: if another believes your religion, then he must be trustworthy. Nonsense. Rarely are the most religious also the most trustworthy. Just another example of why religion justifies so much of what those same people would otherwise call 'evil'.

How to identify the greatest ‘evils’? Let religion be a basis of any decision. Madoff was particularly influential – could promote his lies easiest - among other older Jews.

You completely misinterpret (or misunderstand) my outrage, and at whom it is aimed.

I don't get why they even HAVE a ceiling...

I still don't get why it needs to be raised. Just make people pay in based on what they actually make.

That discussion you quoted was on paying OUT not IN.

It's the law. I guess if you never make enough money to reach it you really could not give a shit about anyone who does pay into it.

:rolleyes:

Class warfare? Give me a friggin' break. IF they are going to tax people's income for SS, they should tax the WHOLE income.

And laws are not always right. If they were, we would still have slavery, and women wouldn't be allowed to vote.

Good stuff. I've often taken an interest in the work of con artists and the mechanisms behind the process. Its amazing how much of an effect the right image can have on someone.

That's my point. It really doesn't need to be raised, though it does make some sense to keep it in line with life expectancy. Life expectancy for those reaching 65 increased 2-5 years between 1940 and 1990. and the retirement age is going up 2 years.

Even on the expert who wrote the book.

And it's been raised since 1940, no? Wasn't it raised just a few years ago? Or in the past 15 years or so? (My memory is faulty on this...)

And everyone should get taxed the same regardless of how much or little you make. When the minority of income earners pay income taxes there is a huge problem.

Which means tax rates on the rich would have to increase.

That's what I meant.

Why? If the rate is currently 36% & going up to 39% how is a flat tax of 15% an increase?

I think he's saying that with all the loopholes and accounting tricks, the rich don't actually end up paying 36-39%, they pay a much lower percentage when all is said and done.

I thought so as well, but you never know with him and god forbid I make an assumption... :eyebrow:

You can't be that naive. With tax breaks and other money games, the rich are paying a lower percentage. Again, as Warren Buffet so often notes bluntly, he is paying less taxes than his receptionist. The rich have low taxes. Americans have some of the lowest tax rates in the world. That reality is not popular where right wing extremists hype myths. But the reality - if the rich are paying tax rates that high, then they must be ignorant or have really bad financial planners. Estimates put the average 'rich man' tax rates at somewhere between 20% and 23%.

Even more stunning is a study performed for the Senate by the GAO at the request of Sen Leven. At least 50% of American corporations pay no taxes. Again this is not popular among those who also knew Saddam had WMDs. These 'oppressive taxes' do not exist once a political agenda is replaced by facts. Classicman plays dumb about a 36% tax rate. He's not that stupid.

That is a true statement. It is called taxable basis. If you elimintate all the loop holes for everyone and no one gets a break from paying taxes, and everyone pays the same, in the end you will collect more.

OK, So according to YOU, the average "average 'rich man' tax rates average out at at somewhere between 20% and 23%. I'm not a mathematician, but thats still more than 15% last I checked.

No, I'm not stupid at all, in fact I am smart enough not to make assumptions about what you mean when your post is so vague. Lets try to stay on topic though - mmmkay?

Your numbers were 36%. Now you are posting 15%? What is the group only paying 15%? Get you head on straight. What are your numbers? Forcing you to do something you rarely do - commit to something - provide facts.

I would like to know WHO Bernie paid off to STILL be living in his penthouse and not jail, which is where he belongs; eating empty-calorie carbs and pooping in front of an audience.

HUH? WTF are you talking about?

Oh OK. :)

Dammit, I wish I could remember where I heard this. Apparently there is a really rich guy in NY (like, multi-multi-multi-millionaire) who hasn't paid any taxes, in YEARS. He actually brags about it. Does the IRS go after him? NOOOOO. Sorry I can't remember who he is or where I heard that.

True story, back in the 80s, my sister lived in NY. My parents and I went to visit her. We were out on the street, and this guy was asking for spare change. My mom started to give him some money when a cop stopped her. He told us the man begging was filthy rich, and that he did that on the side and raked in the bucks doing it.

His lawyer. He could afford a good one.

What do you mean? You don't believe that a minority of income earners pay the majority of income taxes?