Is social security a ponzi scheme Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1250 words

Is social security a ponzi scheme - Essay Example Simply put, in the Social Security program funds are contributed by the working people and are used by people who have retired. The kitty, so to say, is being constantly replenished as is also being used. Thus Social Security is largely a pay-as-you-go program. To take the discussion further it is essential to know what a ponzi scheme is. (meaning of a) Literally speaking, a ponzi scheme is a fraud or a con. The element of deception prevalent in the scheme makes it illegal. In a ponzi scheme the participants or investors are told that their money is being invested in high return yielding real or financial investments. In reality, their money is not invested but is pocketed by the conman running the Ponzi scheme. The ponzi scheme promises returns that are far higher than the market rate. This high rate, which is too good to be true, in itself, should put doubts in the minds of the customer. However gullible investors do fall prey to such ponzi schemes. The earlier investors are paid off by the money contributed by fresh or new investors which keeps the scheme going (MacEwan 2009). In order to remain viable, a Ponzi scheme has to grow rapidly. In fact, the scheme would require double the number of investors/participants after every round of payouts. Let us now shift focus on Social Security. (description of the relevant properties of x) The Social Security program has a mode of financing and functioning and functioning which is pretty much similar to that of a ponzi scheme. However, the distinguishing factor is the intent. The purpose of Social Security is to give at least a subsistence income to the disabled, retirees, their dependents and underage survivors of deceased workers. (any member x of a must have the property p) Social Security consists of four separate trust funds namely the Old Age and Survivors Insurance (OASI) Trust Fund, the Disability Insurance (DI) Trust Fund, the Hospital

IT - Radio Frequency Identification Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2500 words

IT - Radio Frequency Identification - Essay Example This arises because of the simple reason that an wireless monitoring system is capable of checking the work that a person does or claims to have done in addition to even the personal chores that one might attend to. It is like any other personal monitoring system, like say a video-graphy station in a parking lot. There will of course, be occasions when the monitoring station infringes in to the privacy of the individual. The user of such devices has to exhibit caution and responsibility in addition to technical prowess. RFID comes under two basic technological models. One, we call the passive RFID tag and the other an active RFID tag. While the passive RFID tag has a pretty long life with no supporting batteries inside the tag, the active RFID tag has a battery inside it which makes the life of the tag relatively lesser though the power consumption of such tags are very small1. The corollary of such a limited life is that, the RFID tags cannot be embedded permanently inside any object or an animal body including man. If it has to be done, then it has to be a passive tag. The passive tags have another major limitation being that they cannot be read from a distance that is greater than two feet effectively. There are passive tags that are supposed to read even from greater distances but are not found effective. Technologically this limitation arises because of the fact that the RFID tag uses the induction technology of the radio frequency waves. There is always an RFID reader that is placed at strategic points. These readers emanate radiations all around and get triggered once it senses a response. These readers are generally directed and emit radiations only in one direction. In case of a passive tag, the waves sent out by the reader induces a current in the tag itself. This powers the operation of the tag and it passes to the reader a specific number or identification that forms the basis of communication between the two. However, in case of an active tag, the active tag receives the signal and is able to boost it and send it back to the reader. Since this has an internal source of power, the active tags can respond to even very feeble signals from the readers. This is the reason why while passive tags can be read out of a distance of one and half feet to two feet, that of the active tag is much more. And as we have seen earlier, the same reason also has a disadvantage that of life time limitation. RFID provides its users the facility of storage, retrieval, erase and rewriting of the data in the RFID tags from the remote reader. This makes the RFID immensely powerful and enables it to have details like the entire patient history in case of hospitals, payment histories in case of customers / vendors and production data in case you need to monitor the work in progress. Remote reading and writing of data into the RFID tags also make it the right kind of tool to monitor animals in a farm and assets or library books that are issued and returned or routed to some body else. All these are massive advantages for industries. However, these can also be misused by having and storing data that goes into the