Social Security Is a State-Run Ponzi Scheme—and It’s Already Imploding
The Lie of the "Trust Fund"
Let’s cut the crap. Social Security is not going to be “saved.” It was designed as a band-aid during the Great Depression, sold as a social safety net, and morphed into a full-blown pay-as-you-go welfare scheme for the masses. The very structure of it guarantees its collapse. It’s not a savings plan. It’s not a pension. It’s a government-administered Ponzi scheme—and like all Ponzi schemes, it relies on a constant influx of new suckers.
Charles Hugh Smith nails it when he exposes the "trust fund" as a feel-good fraud. There is no vault full of cash waiting to be paid out. What’s really in that “trust fund”? Government IOUs—non-marketable Treasury securities that can’t be sold on the open market. Translation: smoke and mirrors. When payroll taxes don’t cover the payouts, the Treasury borrows money to keep the lights on. That’s not sustainability. That’s financial alchemy practiced by sociopaths with printing presses.
A Scheme That’s Ballooning Out of Control
In the 1970s, you could work a summer job as a teenager and kick in a few bucks to the system. Now? You bleed 12.4% of your paycheck (split between you and your boss) to prop up a scheme that is mathematically unsalvageable. The cost of Social Security has ballooned to $1.6 trillion a year—double what it was just 12 years ago. Meanwhile, the worker-to-beneficiary ratio is in freefall. That alone should tell you this is unsustainable.
Mission Creep and Political Corruption
Let’s talk mission creep. Originally, Social Security was for retirees. Then came disability, Supplemental Security Income (SSI), and more. Suddenly, millions more are drawing benefits from a stagnant tax rate. That’s the hallmark of every government program: expand the rolls, bloat the budget, ignore the math, and hope no one notices until it collapses.
The Decline of Real Wages
And don’t get me started on inflation. Charles did the legwork and showed how his wages in the 1970s, when adjusted for inflation, actually bought more than his wages in the decades since. That should terrify you. Real wage power has collapsed, and the state is still bleeding you dry.
You Could Do Better—If the Government Let You
What Smith dances around—but I won’t—is this: the state has no intention of reforming this system. Any real savings pool would be looted the second a crisis hit. Need to bail out a bank? Drain the pension pool. Need votes? Promise bigger checks. This isn’t just incompetence—it’s corruption baked into the system. And the electorate, fattened on dependency, keeps lining up for more.
The idea that you could take those same payroll taxes and just invest them in 10-year Treasury bonds or even a diversified index fund and end up with a solid retirement plan? Yeah, you could. But the feds will never allow you to manage your own money. They don’t trust you. They want control.
The Harsh Truth: It Was Never Meant to Last
Let’s be clear: Social Security cannot be saved because it was never designed to be saved. It was a political instrument from day one. The only path forward is dismantling the entire pay-as-you-go model and replacing it with decentralized, self-directed retirement planning. That means getting out of the FedNow-digital-dollar surveillance trap before it locks you down permanently.
Final Warning
If you think the government’s going to “fix” Social Security, you’re living in fantasyland. It’s time to prepare for what’s coming. You need to take personal control of your financial future now—before the next collapse hits. I urge you to download Seven Steps to Protect Yourself from Bank Failure by Bill Brocius. This isn’t about fear—it’s about freedom.
The clock is ticking. Get out of the government’s trap while you still can.
—Derek Wolfe
