USA finances a Ponzi scheme ?

VitaMan's Avatar
No.

It has some but not all necessary elements to be a ponzi scheme.

The US has unlimited power to tax and raise money. Because of that, it cannot be a ponzi scheme.

There have been a lot of changed ideas about the federal deficit.

For a long time it was thought the debt and currency needed to be backed by gold. Then the economy grew so large it was not possible.

Further on the concept became as long as debt could be serviced, the size of the debt was not of concern. Just like any household or corporation.

No one seems to know how large the debt can become until it can't be serviced.
As long as someone somewhere is making money off of the National Debt, it will be of no concern.
Nobody is going to be knocking on the door to drag the US into a back alley and bust their knee caps because they got behind on the Vig.

Or at least, that is the attitude of the vast majority of American Voters. I say that because we keep electing Representatives that keep playing the debt game, on both Democrats and Republican sides. Even if the latest politician runs on a platform of doing something about the debt, by the time they get to Washington, they change their mind.
You know as well as I that the vast majority of Americans could care less about the National Debt. Why? Because in their minds, it has little to do with their everyday lives and problems.

Bruno and Jocko are not knocking on any bodies door with a bat in hand.
Lucas McCain's Avatar
It is fucked up, but it is not a Ponzi scheme although it will seem like one when my generation might not have any money left over for our social security benefits when we are eligible to receive them... kidding, the government will just take from my kids' generation to fund it and will keep kicking the can down the road. Haha

https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/ponzi_scheme

Ponzi schemes are a type of investment fraud in which investors are promised artificially high rates of return with little or no risk. Original investors and the perpetrators of the fraud are paid off by funds from later investors, but there is little or no actual business activity that produces revenue. The scheme generates funds for previous investors so long as there is a consistent flow of funds from new investors. This gives the impression that the earlier investments drastically increased in value in a short period of time. The scheme inevitably collapses when too many investors demand redemption or when the scheme fails to attract a sufficient number of new investments.