Liberals also believe Social Security is a Ponzi scheme

posted at 2:17 pm on September 13, 2011 by Howard Portnoy
[ Double Standards ]   

In last night’s GOP debate, frontrunner Rick Perry, who has taken flak from both sides for calling Social Security “a Ponzi scheme,” reaffirmed his view that the system is broken, adding that the entitlement “has been called a Ponzi scheme by many people long before me.”

He’s right. As Noel Sheppard points out at NewsBusters, one of the people who characterized the program that way is none other Hardball host Chris Matthews, who went Perry one better, calling Social Security a “bad Ponzi scheme.”

OK, one might say that Chris Matthews is not running for office (be thankful for small things) and is not terribly bright in any case, but he’s not the only liberal to make that observation. In 1967,liberal Nobel Prize-winning economist and Paul Samuelson wrote in a column in Newsweek titled “Something for Nothing”:

Social Security is squarely based on what has been called the eighth wonder of the world—compound interest. A growing nation is the greatest Ponzi game contrived. And that is a fact, not a paradox. [Emphasis added]

Stanley Kurtz of National Review chronicles a host of other liberals who have made the same allegation, all more distinguished than Chris Matthews. The list includes Stanford University economists Victor Fuchs and John Shoven, who authored a 1999Los Angeles Times op-ed titled “Ponzi Game Needs Equitable Solution” and former Lyndon Johnson speechwriter Ben Wattenberg, who called both Social Security and Medicare “chain letter games.”

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