I just had to laugh

I heard Glenn Beck say that Social Security is nothing more than a government sanctioned Ponzi scheme. This made me laugh, as Glenn often does, not because he is wrong but because he is funny. However, when I thought about it a bit, I realized he has a point. After all, a Ponzi scheme is where you take money from someone promising certain returns, than you take money from several other people and give money back to the original person claiming to have made a killing for them. This whole scheme continues on and on, involving more and more people, until something happens to cause the money to dry up and the entire house of cards comes crashing down. Now, we are prosecuting Bernie Madoff for doing this because it is illegal, as it should be since it is nothing more than a scam. However, if the government does it, it is not only legal but okay? How does that work. Here is a description of how social security works. My parents started paying into it in order to give money to their parents with a 40 paying in to 1 receiving benefits ratio. Now, I'm paying into it in order to give money to my parents, but thanks to the baby boom generation entering retirment, that ratio is now down to 3-1. My children will start paying into it when they go to work in order for me to get money out of it but who knows what the ratio will be then. So, we all pay into it, but our money is used to give to the current recipients. For us to receive anything, the pyramid must continually build upon itself so to speak, meaning our kids will have to pay into it and so on. The only way for this to work in the long run is if we are having more children with each successive generation than the previous one did. This is obviously not the case. In fact, our birth rate is in decline, generally. So, that means the money will eventually dry up because once you have a 1-1 ratio or worse, the system cannot sustain itself, the proverbial house of cards will have to crash. It really is one giant government sponsored ponzi scheme after all. Still think it is the BEST way? I haven't thought that for years.