This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Wednesday, January 7, 2009.

I'm Caleb Brown, a modest proposal for Social Security Commissioner from Cato Institute Senior Fellow Mike Tanner.

He suggests accused Ponzi scheme operator Bernard Madoff.

Well, now I admit this is a slight problem. The fact is that he's been arrested under indictment for having run a 50 billion dollar Ponzi scheme.

But on the other hand, if you look look at a sort of maybe a qualification

What is he accused of it was that he took money from people claim that he was investing it but didn't, just kind of spent it.

And then he would take money from later investors

and use that money to pay returns to the early investors.

There's a classic Ponzi scheme.

Well, what is Social Security? It's a program under which they take money from people,

don't save it or invest it. Instead, they simply wait until the next generation comes along,

take more money from them, and use that to pay off the money

on retirees and just like Madoff scheme in the end these things are unsustainable you

you run out of new investors and the the program begins to crumble so I can't think of

anyone better qualified to run a Social Security program. One argument would be

that well that's that's all that's very funny and cheeky but the the key difference is

that look so security is not voluntary and because of that it is therefore

sustainable over much longer periods of time.

Well, it's true that the Madoff scheme in some ways broke down

because people tried to take their money out,

which you can't do with Social Security.

On the other hand, Social Security is simply subject to demographics. The fact is we're living longer and having fewer babies.

...