I'm going to stuff all our money under our mattress...

Bernie Madoff will be sitting in jail for the rest of his life for operating the so-called largest Ponzi scheme in history. The actual amount of the fraud is estimated to be likely between $12 to $20 billion.

I was thinking about this and what a Ponzi scheme is (from Wikipedia, emphasis mine):

A Ponzi scheme is a fraudulent investment operation that pays returns to separate investors, not from any actual profit earned by the organization, but from their own money or money paid by subsequent investors. The Ponzi scheme usually entices new investors by offering returns other investments cannot guarantee, in the form of short-term returns that are either abnormally high or unusually consistent. The perpetuation of the returns that a Ponzi scheme advertises and pays requires an ever-increasing flow of money from investors to keep the scheme going.

So hasn't our government in essence been running a much larger Ponzi scheme in Social Security? Much larger and much farther reaching than what Madoff did? And actually, I just discovered that this is not my own original idea (also on Wikipedia):

Social Security has been a pyramid scheme from the beginning. Those who paid in first received money from those who paid in second — and so on, generation after generation. This was great so long as the small generation when Social Security began was being supported by larger generations resulting from the baby boom. But, like all pyramid schemes, the whole thing is in big trouble once the pyramid stops growing. When the baby boomers retire, that will be the moment of truth — or of more artful lies. Just like Enron. — Thomas Sowell, Capitalism Magazine

Others call it a "quasi" pyramid scheme because a true Ponzi scheme proffers a mythical source of revenue-generation, while social security payments have always been openly underwritten by tax revenue. Either way, this is a big deal. Consider:

• In 2004 the U.S. Social Security system paid out almost $500 billion in benefits
  
• The U.S. Social Security program is the largest government program in the world and the single greatest expenditure in the federal budget
• The program is currently estimated to keep roughly 40% of all Americans age 65 or older out of poverty

In general, I don't really have political leanings because I think I've become quite jaded to believe that few (if any politicians) have the best interest of the country in mind. I think debt is bad. I think programs like Social Security that are not sustainable and that drive us further into debt are bad. Like personal finances, the way to fix this is to spend less and/or earn more, implying that we need to tax more and spend less. But politicians fight for the opposite because that will win elections.

The things that keep me up at night...sigh...