Ep. 1852 - This Is The Greatest Scam In American History. It's Time To End It.

Matt Walsh (0:00)

Now, we've all heard the radio ads about owing the IRS money. They try to scare you and frighten you in the calling. Well, tax relief advocates is different. If you owe the IRS 5,000, 50,000 or 500,000, TRA has a solution to resolve your tax problem. Don't lose hope. TRA could reduce or even eliminate what you owe. Their passion is taxes and helping regular people and businesses fix their IRS mess. They have over 1,000 five-star Google reviews and an A plus with the Better Business Bureau. You don't have to be afraid of the IRS anymore. Real tax relief programs are available that can give you a fresh start. So don't wait, go to tra.com. It's tra.com or call 800-575-1753.

Again, that's 800-575-1753.

Tax relief advocates, real solutions for real people. When a PhD student was investigating the state gambling industry in West Virginia, he made a pretty remarkable discovery. A grand total of 43 million bets were placed by just 16,000 gamblers using a single casino app in a span of one month. So a very small number of people are responsible for a staggering amount of betting and interestingly enough, these bets spiked on specific days, every second, third, and fourth Wednesday of the month. Now, why might that be? You wouldn't expect Wednesdays to be a particularly big day for betting or for anything else. But consistently, week after week, that's what the researcher observed. And then after doing a little digging, he realized what was going on. Wednesdays are when Social Security payments go out. Retirees were getting checks in the mail and immediately putting the money into slot machines without even waiting a day. So they're just lighting the money on fire essentially. And this is money that we desperately need as a country. Social Security is the single biggest line item in the federal budget and a major driver of our national debt. And we're distributing this money to millions of people who in many cases clearly don't need it. This is the kind of waste that in any other context would justifiably attract a lot of attention. When we learned that Somali daycare owners were buying luxury SUVs with our tax money, the vice president launched a fraud task force. The feds raided the leering centers. It was a national scandal, as well, it should be. But the news that Social Security checks are fueling the gambling industry in states like West Virginia, one of the poorest states in the country, has been totally ignored. No one's even pretending to care about the implications. Now, if your response is, well, these people paid into Social Security so they can spend the money however they want. Well, then you're missing two very important points. First of all, no, these people did not pay into anything. They paid a tax to the government, which then immediately spent their money. The payouts they're receiving in the form of regular checks are coming from working taxpayers, many of whom need the money to survive, not to blow it on gambling. Secondly, on a related note, Social Security is unsustainable. The system depends on an ever-creasing number of workers who have to fund this Ponzi scheme with their tax payments for an increasingly elderly population. And yes, Social Security is quite literally a Ponzi scheme. A Ponzi scheme is a fraudulent investment plan where older investors are paid out from money collected from newer or more recent investors. And this is exactly how Social Security works. But there's a problem. Well, many problems, but this is a big one. Fertility rates in this country have plummeted. We don't have enough workers paying taxes. And therefore the Social Security Trust Fund is set to run out in the fourth quarter of 2032 And once the reserve is exhausted, only around 78% of scheduled benefits would be provided. And if the government tries to solve the problem by printing money, it will cause inflation, which will ultimately cause Social Security distributions to rise even further since the benefits are adjusted based on the cost of living. In other words, whether you want to cut Social Security benefits or not, something has to give. At some point, sacrifices will have to be made. There's no getting around it. The only question is, who is making the sacrifice and in what form and when? According to a recent survey from the Cato Institute that's getting a lot of attention today, a large majority of boomers have decided on their preferred solution. They know who should make the sacrifice. The answer is their children and their grandchildren. Listen to this, quote, An overwhelming 89 percent of Americans over the age of 65 said Social Security benefits should be protected at current levels even if it means higher taxes on younger workers. It's not only Americans aged 65 plus who prefer the solution. Roughly 84 percent of those aged 55 to 64 preferred higher taxes on younger Americans while 74 percent between the ages of 45 and 54 agreed with it as well. In other words, the closer Americans get to retirement, the more likely they are to favor protecting today's benefits at the expense of younger workers who will end up paying higher taxes to keep it afloat.