The Premise
Send $1 to each of the five names on this list! Then, remove the name at the top of the list, add your name to the bottom of the list, and send copies of this message to everyone you know!	Send 7.65% of every paycheck to the Federal Government. It will be redistributed to retirees. Everyone you know is doing the same thing, and you and they will continue to do so for as long as you live in the United States.
The Promise
Let's look at the math! If you send this message to 10 people, and they each send it to ten people, and they each send it to ten people, that's $10 + $100 + $1000 = $1110 in your pocket! And since there are five spots on the list, you will receive $111,110 before you're finished! Guaranteed!	Every day, tax revenues are deposited in the trust funds. Social Security benefits are paid from these funds, and any money not needed to pay benefits is invested daily in U.S. government bonds. - From www.ssa.gov
The Problem
Every pyramid scheme (i.e. chain letter) involves each person recruiting several others for the scheme. The money doesn't appear from nowhere, it moves from the person's pocket at the bottom of the list to the one at the top. But every time the letter is sent, some number of people become former players, and will not send any more letters. As more and more letters are propagated, there are fewer and fewer people willing to play who haven't already played. The final result is that after a surprisingly small number of sendings (if everyone finds 5 people to pass on the letter, that would cover every man, woman and child in the U.S. after only 12 generations--only two more than the number of names on the list) everyone who is willing to play has already played, and there is no-one left to send to. So the people at the end send the money, but can't find anyone else to play, and end up losing their money. If 250,000,000 people are available to play, and the fan-out is five people to pass on to for every generation, that means that something like 249,902,344 people get nothing. Zero. Zip. Nada.	Since 1983, the program has operated under a "partial reserve" method of funding. The intent is to have the system take in more than it pays out in order to build up the large reserve funds needed to help pay for the benefits of an increasing number of retired workers. The latest report from the Board of Trustees, released in April 1998, provides mixed news about the future financial condition of Social Security. The combined OASI and DI trust funds will be able to pay benefits for many years into the future. In the long range, however, the funds are not adequately financed and would become exhausted in 35 years, based on the most likely assumptions in the 1999 trustees report. - From www.ssa.gov (And that probably assumes that the government will be able to repay the bonds the SSA is "buying" today. Given were the SSA is heading, that seems a risky assumption to make about the rest of the government.)
The Potential
People who run promulgate chain letters go to jail.	Politicians who perpetuate Social Security get reelected.

The social security "trust fund" is in fact a pile of US Savings Bonds. The politicians speak of it as if it were cash, but in fact they're continually "borrowing" from that fund. Beginning in 2015, the Social Security Administration will begin calling in all of the bonds in the trust fund. At that point, there are two choices: raise taxes dramatically to cover the debt, or print money. Neither option bodes well for the economy.

Problem, is, no politician in the US today seems to have the courage to stand up and say, "Hey, this is not sustainable. We're dooming our children." Then again, maybe the real problem is that nobody who actually says that in public would actually get enough votes to be able to do anything about it.