SS is a ponzi scheme because the money has been spent and requires and ever increasing number of contributors to stay solvent but the number of those paying in has been shrinking each year for a number of years.
I said that, what you said, but his words are a ponzi like Madoff...putting in with the intent to defraud...the issue is too many are tapping into it and brave politicians with testicles to tackle maybe raising contributions, raising the time before retirement ...no one likes these words but there is a fix...as mentioned...go tell that to those who benefit from it. as you did and would and could. no doubt it has to be fixed
Additionally, using contribution of later investors to pay off earlier investors is exactly what SS does and is the definition of a Ponzi scheme. Musk’s description of SS is accurate.
It IS fraud. Have you ever looked at any of the ads or read any of the speeches that were delivered to sell my great grand parents on the idea of SS? The promise was that your SSN was an account number where your contributions were kept until you retired when you would get them back with interest AND that your SSN would never be used as an ID number other than for your SSN account. Instead, SS contributions went into the general fund and were spent on other things and the SSN IS now a national ID. It is FRAUD. The money you pay into it is gone before it even gets there.
It's like insurance, one of the greatest scams of all time. SS is not voluntary, it's literally forced on everyone and it has a proven track record of the worst returns on investment.
What Dr. Paul is talking about is how Musk got his BUSINESSES. THEY were started on the backs of taxpayers. Every single one of his businesses was started based on some Green New Deal scam. He got funding from OUR GOVERNMENT, to START those businesses. However, the ideas were NOT his. Musk is just as much a FRAUD as Trump is.
When the government is promoting electric cars and voluntarily giving subsidies and incentives, all of that is done by the government officials that resulted from who the American people voted in, called Democracy. Why wouldn't Musk take advantage of this to build his car company and become successful? We gave loan guarantees to Chrysler, was Chrysler a FRAUD? We gave loans to GM also, was GM a FRAUD? Notice that all of these car companies, including Tesla, paid back all the loans on time with interest. Why do you say Trump is a fraud? Because he's doing what he promised to do?
And so could you have done. Doesn't matter if the ideas were his or not. As an entrepreneur, you take ideas, add or subtract to them, get backing and off you go.
Ok, so the government funds thousands of companies such as Big Pharma. If you have a problem with the government funding anyone take it up with the Federal government. Let’s take Boeing for example.
The thing is, though, that whether or not he paid them back (and I am seeing comments that say he has paid back the subsidies) he has built some very successful companies, and he has created a lot of jobs, in addition to contributing to the economy by providing customers with products they want to use.
This is the way it is. Every Univ research facility receives monies from the govt. They, or the people involved, invent something, get patents, make tons of money and never pay a dime back. This is true for everything that is subsidized. Farmers too.
Do you know the difference between a Ponzi Scheme and government funding or subsidizing something? And what is it with you posting unflattering pics all the time. Kind of grade school. Last I checked a lot of the people who are wealthy that started companies that grew exponentially had some government assistance of some sort. Our politicians on both sides of the aisle like to go to ribbon cutting ceremonies or 'bring home the bacon' to their local district, taking bows for getting a defense contractor or some other business opened there. Tax credits are often used. Do I like all of it? No. Is some of it beneficial? Yes, especially when it can tie back to national security, or be a tech that then other entrepreneurs can build off of. Buffet is about Buffet. He forgets how the U.S. funded itself a century+ ago. Canada has been hosing American dairy farmers and dairy product manufacturers for years. Now an American President stands up and he's the bad guy???
Does not anyone understand how startups work? Any one of us could do the same thing. But not many of us have the motivation to be a player. Enough of this. Just a big distraction.
In which case, every start up business that received any funding from the government was paid for by taxpayers. It’s the government that offered the incentives; so punish those who bit the apple? I don’t think so.
It is a ponzi scheme. They take our money and use it for other projects and programs, rather than investing it for us. We need to have the option to keep the money and invest it ourselves, rather than have the government "borrow" it from us with no interest.
The EV industry was basically created by government through subsidies and regulations and now people are complaining that Musk took advantage of by developing the most successful and efficient EV technology in the world?
You are a typical liberal. Blaming a guy for being an entrepreneur who’s more successful than you could ever be. Tell us you don’t k own what a Ponzi scheme is without literally saying it.
Musk built a reusable rocket launching pad, NASA is using the technology . Elon didn’t “ take” anything. He creates things that nobody has mastered prior. What have you built, Doc? What are you so obsessively bitching about?
First it was Malone, who took responsibility for a failed technology. Now it’s Elon,Hegseth,Duffy,Lutnick, RFK Jr. and any and all things Trump. I was with you on Vance, but he’s better than I expected. You’ve even managed to repeatedly smear Caitlyn Jenner, who’s actually incredibly decent and is standing against the deceptive “ transactivism” movement.
If you have personal issues with Trump- which is obviously motivating your obsession, take them up with him. You’re not helping.
Yes, payments to Musk and his businesses certainly need investigating, but so does Social Security. AMAC just released information that from 2015-2022 Social Security paid out $72 BILLION in improper payments.
Jesus Paul. I like your stuff usually but what's with these now? Did he build and produce with that money or did he 'take' it? This is not the same as the slush funds, grifts, corruption, ineptness, that is destroying the West from our tax dollars (not mine I'm in CDN with our own grift).
I don't really agree with Gov subsidies etc but is this the time to be fighting this. Can't we cut off all the waste and go from there.
Well, first, those who fail to make distinctions and try to make a point based on a (specious) shared similarity fall into one of several categories:
A. Ignorant about the differences (because it’s the difference that makes the difference),
B. Careless for not bothering to ascertain the differences, or
C. Propagandistic for deliberately overlooking the difference in order to sway the opinion of large numbers of people who are not aware of the differences by getting them to focus on specious similarities.
That the headline above appears to be a mixture of all of the above is evident by the typical use of religion, the failure to delineate the differences, and just being plain wrong about what Jesus actually said.
The last indicates to me that this was probably yet another headline “scavenged” from a leftist news aggregator site.
One thing you can be certain about leftists is that they generally know as little about the Bible as they do about the Constitution, the nature of human civilization, and economics.
Why? Because of their primary trait: they believe that reality exists in a one-to-one correspondence with their ideas of it.
Here’s what Jesus said about the Pharisees (in verse two of one of my songs):
He called them vipers
and sons of the devil
Children of hell
who’d eat the house of a widow,
Whitewashed tombs
packed full of bones and old rot--
Hey! That’s not a nice thing to say
To ridicule the Pharisee way
And he went on to describe them as looking beautiful and clean from the outside, like a cup washed on the outside but full of filthiness and nastiness on the inside. Nothing about “empty tombs.” That’s either quoting a leftist or just carelessness.
Musk’s companies have contracts with the government to provide services that no other businesses have the capacity to provide--they are a proven benefit to the interests of the United States. They certainly are not multi-billion dollar slush funds to aid leftist causes targeting both the security and culture of the United States (think of Biden’s multi-billion dollar disbursement of tax dollars to put high speed internet in every home--years passed and not in a single home; or Biden’s multi-billion dollar to provide electric car charging stations--years passed and only around 10 built, if that).
There’s no reason at all why his expertise should not also benefit the United States in doing, for the first time in U.S. history, a deep, deep dive into the blatant theft of the U.S. treasury by the left and by other criminals inside and outside of the federal government, both here and abroad.
To allege that he is a hypocrite for providing two services because his companies are being paid for one of them is SLANDER because the (unfounded) presupposition is that he is taking money unethically or unlawfully while saying that people should not take money unethically or unlawfully.
It’s also sort of a fundamentally moronic use of A. the fallacy of the undistributed middle combined with B. the fallacy of emphasis (using a word that actually means one thing as though it means another to reach an invalid conclusion):
Crooks take money from Washington,
Some of Elon Musk’s companies take money from Washington,
Therefore, Elon Musk is a hypocrite for saying crooks shouldn’t take money from Washington because some of his companies take money from Washington.
A. The undistributed middle term is “take money from Washington.”
In other words:
All S is M
All P is M
Therefore, all P is S
The idiocy of which can be seen this way:
All functional vaccines stimulate an adaptive immune response
All infectious pathogens stimulate an adaptive immune response
Therefore, all infectious pathogens are functional vaccines because they stimulate an adaptive immune response.
This is both a fallacy of the undistributed middle as well as a fallacy of emphasis because both of the first two terms leave out important distinctions--that is, differences that make a difference.
Or
A robber wants your money
You want your money,
Therefore, there’s no difference between you because both of you want exactly the same thing.
Or even more simply:
You are human
I am human
Therefore, I am you.
B. The fallacy of emphasis involves both the words “take money from” and “hypocrite.”
In the first term, “take money from” means “to steal.”
In the second term, “take money from” means “to be remunerated for a product or service.”
And to selectively define “hypocrisy” using a phrase that means two distinctly different things is invalid.
If done unknowingly, it’s ignorant or careless.
If done knowingly for the purpose of smearing someone, it’s malicious propaganda.
Sorry to piss on your parade yet again, but Social Security is a Ponzi Scheme. It always has been. Moreover, Congress continually borrows from the funds set-aside for Social Security and never pays it back. They leave that bill to be paid by some future Congress... that will never exist.
Social Security is literally the definition of a Ponzi scheme, although it's one "backed by the government at gunpoint" and the fraud is the people being paid by the Trust who never contributed a penny. From Grok:
"A Ponzi scheme is a fraudulent investment scam where returns are paid to earlier investors using the capital contributed by newer investors, rather than from legitimate profits or revenue generated by the operation. Named after Charles Ponzi, who ran such a scheme in the 1920s, it typically promises high returns with little risk. "
Musk’s comments I’m sure were meant as hyperbole to get the much needed conversation going. Being an outsider with nothing to gain from SS he is simply dispassionately trying to help us realize the dilemma facing future generations.
We shouldn’t be so thinned skinned defending a doomed system. It’s time to face facts and not be so afraid to deal with it.
Everybody knows that every social security system around the world are and called Ponzi scheme. What is sometimes wrong with you Paul? And about the 40 billions dollars from the US taxpayers, did he stole them?
SS is a ponzi scheme because the money has been spent and requires and ever increasing number of contributors to stay solvent but the number of those paying in has been shrinking each year for a number of years.
I said that, what you said, but his words are a ponzi like Madoff...putting in with the intent to defraud...the issue is too many are tapping into it and brave politicians with testicles to tackle maybe raising contributions, raising the time before retirement ...no one likes these words but there is a fix...as mentioned...go tell that to those who benefit from it. as you did and would and could. no doubt it has to be fixed
Additionally, using contribution of later investors to pay off earlier investors is exactly what SS does and is the definition of a Ponzi scheme. Musk’s description of SS is accurate.
It IS fraud. Have you ever looked at any of the ads or read any of the speeches that were delivered to sell my great grand parents on the idea of SS? The promise was that your SSN was an account number where your contributions were kept until you retired when you would get them back with interest AND that your SSN would never be used as an ID number other than for your SSN account. Instead, SS contributions went into the general fund and were spent on other things and the SSN IS now a national ID. It is FRAUD. The money you pay into it is gone before it even gets there.
i call it a ponzi scheme because if i die before i collect all of it... my next of kin get nothing....
besides they spent all the excess on their wars or whatever.... i would call that embezzlement
It's like insurance, one of the greatest scams of all time. SS is not voluntary, it's literally forced on everyone and it has a proven track record of the worst returns on investment.
What about using the barrel of a gun to force us to contribute to it. What do they call that?
I am certain it went out to bid and , again, his bid was lower and better than NASA
What the heck are you talking about? Musk isn’t receiving any pay for one thing. Why are you so obsessed with him?
What Dr. Paul is talking about is how Musk got his BUSINESSES. THEY were started on the backs of taxpayers. Every single one of his businesses was started based on some Green New Deal scam. He got funding from OUR GOVERNMENT, to START those businesses. However, the ideas were NOT his. Musk is just as much a FRAUD as Trump is.
When the government is promoting electric cars and voluntarily giving subsidies and incentives, all of that is done by the government officials that resulted from who the American people voted in, called Democracy. Why wouldn't Musk take advantage of this to build his car company and become successful? We gave loan guarantees to Chrysler, was Chrysler a FRAUD? We gave loans to GM also, was GM a FRAUD? Notice that all of these car companies, including Tesla, paid back all the loans on time with interest. Why do you say Trump is a fraud? Because he's doing what he promised to do?
America's voting mechanisms and the world's have been completely COMPROMISED by CIA FRACTIONAL VOTING MACHINES for decades !
And so could you have done. Doesn't matter if the ideas were his or not. As an entrepreneur, you take ideas, add or subtract to them, get backing and off you go.
So now do Boeing
https://www.visualcapitalist.com/which-u-s-companies-receive-the-most-government-subsidies/
Ok, so the government funds thousands of companies such as Big Pharma. If you have a problem with the government funding anyone take it up with the Federal government. Let’s take Boeing for example.
https://www.visualcapitalist.com/which-u-s-companies-receive-the-most-government-subsidies/
He received government subsidies to fund his businesses. Did he repay the "government" when he made money from those businesses? IDK.
The thing is, though, that whether or not he paid them back (and I am seeing comments that say he has paid back the subsidies) he has built some very successful companies, and he has created a lot of jobs, in addition to contributing to the economy by providing customers with products they want to use.
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/report-says-elon-musks-businesses-150042117.html
Yes paid back, read article
This is the way it is. Every Univ research facility receives monies from the govt. They, or the people involved, invent something, get patents, make tons of money and never pay a dime back. This is true for everything that is subsidized. Farmers too.
You're correct, but the loans to the car companies have all been paid back.
Does Boeing repay the government for what they’ve profited from after receiving $15.5B from the US government?
https://www.visualcapitalist.com/which-u-s-companies-receive-the-most-government-subsidies/
Do you know the difference between a Ponzi Scheme and government funding or subsidizing something? And what is it with you posting unflattering pics all the time. Kind of grade school. Last I checked a lot of the people who are wealthy that started companies that grew exponentially had some government assistance of some sort. Our politicians on both sides of the aisle like to go to ribbon cutting ceremonies or 'bring home the bacon' to their local district, taking bows for getting a defense contractor or some other business opened there. Tax credits are often used. Do I like all of it? No. Is some of it beneficial? Yes, especially when it can tie back to national security, or be a tech that then other entrepreneurs can build off of. Buffet is about Buffet. He forgets how the U.S. funded itself a century+ ago. Canada has been hosing American dairy farmers and dairy product manufacturers for years. Now an American President stands up and he's the bad guy???
Does not anyone understand how startups work? Any one of us could do the same thing. But not many of us have the motivation to be a player. Enough of this. Just a big distraction.
In which case, every start up business that received any funding from the government was paid for by taxpayers. It’s the government that offered the incentives; so punish those who bit the apple? I don’t think so.
It is a ponzi scheme. They take our money and use it for other projects and programs, rather than investing it for us. We need to have the option to keep the money and invest it ourselves, rather than have the government "borrow" it from us with no interest.
The EV industry was basically created by government through subsidies and regulations and now people are complaining that Musk took advantage of by developing the most successful and efficient EV technology in the world?
People are dumb.
You are a typical liberal. Blaming a guy for being an entrepreneur who’s more successful than you could ever be. Tell us you don’t k own what a Ponzi scheme is without literally saying it.
Musk built a reusable rocket launching pad, NASA is using the technology . Elon didn’t “ take” anything. He creates things that nobody has mastered prior. What have you built, Doc? What are you so obsessively bitching about?
First it was Malone, who took responsibility for a failed technology. Now it’s Elon,Hegseth,Duffy,Lutnick, RFK Jr. and any and all things Trump. I was with you on Vance, but he’s better than I expected. You’ve even managed to repeatedly smear Caitlyn Jenner, who’s actually incredibly decent and is standing against the deceptive “ transactivism” movement.
If you have personal issues with Trump- which is obviously motivating your obsession, take them up with him. You’re not helping.
Yes, payments to Musk and his businesses certainly need investigating, but so does Social Security. AMAC just released information that from 2015-2022 Social Security paid out $72 BILLION in improper payments.
Jesus Paul. I like your stuff usually but what's with these now? Did he build and produce with that money or did he 'take' it? This is not the same as the slush funds, grifts, corruption, ineptness, that is destroying the West from our tax dollars (not mine I'm in CDN with our own grift).
I don't really agree with Gov subsidies etc but is this the time to be fighting this. Can't we cut off all the waste and go from there.
Well, first, those who fail to make distinctions and try to make a point based on a (specious) shared similarity fall into one of several categories:
A. Ignorant about the differences (because it’s the difference that makes the difference),
B. Careless for not bothering to ascertain the differences, or
C. Propagandistic for deliberately overlooking the difference in order to sway the opinion of large numbers of people who are not aware of the differences by getting them to focus on specious similarities.
That the headline above appears to be a mixture of all of the above is evident by the typical use of religion, the failure to delineate the differences, and just being plain wrong about what Jesus actually said.
The last indicates to me that this was probably yet another headline “scavenged” from a leftist news aggregator site.
One thing you can be certain about leftists is that they generally know as little about the Bible as they do about the Constitution, the nature of human civilization, and economics.
Why? Because of their primary trait: they believe that reality exists in a one-to-one correspondence with their ideas of it.
Here’s what Jesus said about the Pharisees (in verse two of one of my songs):
He called them vipers
and sons of the devil
Children of hell
who’d eat the house of a widow,
Whitewashed tombs
packed full of bones and old rot--
Hey! That’s not a nice thing to say
To ridicule the Pharisee way
And he went on to describe them as looking beautiful and clean from the outside, like a cup washed on the outside but full of filthiness and nastiness on the inside. Nothing about “empty tombs.” That’s either quoting a leftist or just carelessness.
Musk’s companies have contracts with the government to provide services that no other businesses have the capacity to provide--they are a proven benefit to the interests of the United States. They certainly are not multi-billion dollar slush funds to aid leftist causes targeting both the security and culture of the United States (think of Biden’s multi-billion dollar disbursement of tax dollars to put high speed internet in every home--years passed and not in a single home; or Biden’s multi-billion dollar to provide electric car charging stations--years passed and only around 10 built, if that).
There’s no reason at all why his expertise should not also benefit the United States in doing, for the first time in U.S. history, a deep, deep dive into the blatant theft of the U.S. treasury by the left and by other criminals inside and outside of the federal government, both here and abroad.
To allege that he is a hypocrite for providing two services because his companies are being paid for one of them is SLANDER because the (unfounded) presupposition is that he is taking money unethically or unlawfully while saying that people should not take money unethically or unlawfully.
It’s also sort of a fundamentally moronic use of A. the fallacy of the undistributed middle combined with B. the fallacy of emphasis (using a word that actually means one thing as though it means another to reach an invalid conclusion):
Crooks take money from Washington,
Some of Elon Musk’s companies take money from Washington,
Therefore, Elon Musk is a hypocrite for saying crooks shouldn’t take money from Washington because some of his companies take money from Washington.
A. The undistributed middle term is “take money from Washington.”
In other words:
All S is M
All P is M
Therefore, all P is S
The idiocy of which can be seen this way:
All functional vaccines stimulate an adaptive immune response
All infectious pathogens stimulate an adaptive immune response
Therefore, all infectious pathogens are functional vaccines because they stimulate an adaptive immune response.
This is both a fallacy of the undistributed middle as well as a fallacy of emphasis because both of the first two terms leave out important distinctions--that is, differences that make a difference.
Or
A robber wants your money
You want your money,
Therefore, there’s no difference between you because both of you want exactly the same thing.
Or even more simply:
You are human
I am human
Therefore, I am you.
B. The fallacy of emphasis involves both the words “take money from” and “hypocrite.”
In the first term, “take money from” means “to steal.”
In the second term, “take money from” means “to be remunerated for a product or service.”
And to selectively define “hypocrisy” using a phrase that means two distinctly different things is invalid.
If done unknowingly, it’s ignorant or careless.
If done knowingly for the purpose of smearing someone, it’s malicious propaganda.
Sorry to piss on your parade yet again, but Social Security is a Ponzi Scheme. It always has been. Moreover, Congress continually borrows from the funds set-aside for Social Security and never pays it back. They leave that bill to be paid by some future Congress... that will never exist.
Social Security is literally the definition of a Ponzi scheme, although it's one "backed by the government at gunpoint" and the fraud is the people being paid by the Trust who never contributed a penny. From Grok:
"A Ponzi scheme is a fraudulent investment scam where returns are paid to earlier investors using the capital contributed by newer investors, rather than from legitimate profits or revenue generated by the operation. Named after Charles Ponzi, who ran such a scheme in the 1920s, it typically promises high returns with little risk. "
Musk’s comments I’m sure were meant as hyperbole to get the much needed conversation going. Being an outsider with nothing to gain from SS he is simply dispassionately trying to help us realize the dilemma facing future generations.
We shouldn’t be so thinned skinned defending a doomed system. It’s time to face facts and not be so afraid to deal with it.
Everybody knows that every social security system around the world are and called Ponzi scheme. What is sometimes wrong with you Paul? And about the 40 billions dollars from the US taxpayers, did he stole them?