…I watched the Republican Presidential candidate debate on Wednesday night. The most excitement of the 2 hours came when Rick Perry doubled down on his recent comments about the Social Security system in the US. In days prior to the debate Perry referred to Social Security as a Ponzi scheme. During the debate, he could have tempered his remarks about the US retirement system that has been in place since 1935, or choose to ratchet up his rhetoric instead. In referring to Social Security Perry said “ It is a Ponzi scheme to tell our kids that are 25 or 30 years old today, you're paying into a program that's going to be there. Anybody that's for the status quo with Social Security today is involved with a monstrous lie to our kids, and it's not right.”
Perry’s comments have to be called out as the lie they are. Perry is lying about Social Security. He is fabricating things that hold no basis in fact. He is deliberately misleading and confusing you. The reason I, and everybody else who knows the truth, must smash this down and expose it as a lie, is because if he, the GOP, and Fox News is permitted to get this going in their echo chamber, a section of the public will start to believe it’s actually true. Just look at the “death panels” that were said to be part of the Affordable Care Act that was signed in into law in 2010. There are no death panels, but in absence of aggressive pushback against a lie, if it is allowed to be repeated enough, people start to believe it’s true.
Social Security as a Ponzi scheme? Certainly not! Put most simply, here’s why. If you do better with a picture than with a written article, then check out this Venn diagram to see what characteristics Social Security and a Ponzi scheme do, and do not, share.
Click on the image to enlarge.
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