Posted on 08/29/2011 12:58:04 PM PDT by martosko
There goes Rick Perry again, saying things that make liberals’ heads explode.
Speaking to a crowd in Iowa this weekend, the Texas governor and GOP presidential hopeful doubled down on statements he made in his book, Fed Up!, that Social Security is essentially a pyramid scheme.
“It is a Ponzi scheme for these young people,” Perry said. “The idea that they’re working and paying into Social Security today, that the current program is going to be there for them, is a lie. It is a monstrous lie on this generation, and we can’t do that to them.”
The left reacted, predictably, with shock and outrage. Liberal blog Firedoglake called Perry’s rhetoric “wingnutty talk” and “crazy sh*t.”
My congressman was calling it a ponzi scheme a year ago. The liberals went ballistic and even had ads about it.
True is true.
You’re on a third duplicate. See this one: http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/2770487/posts?page=61#61
The truth hurts.
The stuck pig squeals the loudest................
Beats me. It is probably the biggest ponzi scheme in the history of the world.
When you have no solutions to offer, you name call. How many times have we heard this crap to change the subject.
But ... Ponzi Scheme? That's definite. Why is there even a debate? The math is the math and SS is a ponzi scheme.
It’s not a spade ... it’s a TRUST FUND that WAS solvent until Congress in their enfant-ant wisdom [that’s baby-small-minded] started sucking money out of the Trust Fund for its own little schemes.
CUT MedicAID and Food Stamps ... there’s never been a Trust Fund for them ... and all other UNFUNDED ‘entitlement’ type payments.
AND make all government officials part of the SSA system ... Congress especially ... that’ll FIX the problem that shouldn’t exist.
I think that Perry was saying that the way the government today uses money collected for SS is a scam. The money is collected for SS but used for something else and then tell the people the program is broke. Still trust these politicians?
I agree with Perry.
Did Perry mention the hundreds of billions of dollars sucked up by anchor babies, illegals, new immigrants, and their respective families? Or the money being spent to fix up Mexican trucks, to sponsor green technology overseas, to pay college tuition for students from red China, to set up the Moslem Brotherhood in Libya, etc.?
Social Security uses money from new ‘investors’ (current workers’ FICA tax withholdings) to pay ‘returns’ (’benefits’) to existing/previous ‘investors’ (retirees whose FICA tax withholdings were used to pay ‘benefits’ to the previous generation of etirees).
If there is a better or more succinct, description of our Social Security system than ‘ponzi scheme’ I’d like to hear it.
Yep - And I wish he'd elaborate about the famous "Lock Box", lol!
Their D.C. 'how can we fool 'em today' jig is up!
Perry's team has obviously polled on the legitimate gripes us little people have and it's resonating like a sonic boom and exploding pointy liberal heads all over the country! I love it...
He lets the chips fall where they may and I like that. We need someone who the "do what we say or else" media thinks is a little crazy.
Perry might be able to rock them back on their heels, especially when they realize that his iconoclastic attitude trumps their politically correct attacks.
Palin is my candidate if she gets in because she clearly strikes terror into the heart of the political machinery of both the Dems and the GOP, but I could live with Perry.
The classic Ponzi is marked by kicking the can of debt down the road to would-be investors who can’t sustain it. This is what SS has developed into, given modern US demographics. To be fair to the conception of the program, it was not intended to become a Ponzi. Even the lefties of that age were saner than that.
From the beginning until the 1986 tax reform Social Security was largely a "pay as you go" system where taxes closely matched payouts. The SS trust fund was a rounding error wandering between $20 and $40 billion in total value. After 1986 taxes were increased to "save money for future payouts" and the trust fund's accumulated value climbed to over $2.5 trillion. By law these could only be invested in government bonds, i.e. skimmed off by the rest of government. If these were used to pay off general bonds held by the public then it would be OK. Instead the cash was just spent.
Lots of tables on the trust fund and annual SS spending and receipts in Social Security: The Trust Fund
If it wasn’t a government program, everyone connected with it would be sharing a cell with Bernie Madoff. Perry is kind to suggest that it’s just another Ponzi scheme-it’s much worse than that because it steals from taxpayers, where Ponzi schemes just dupe people.
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