Social Security is a Ponzi scheme.
Governor Rick Perry must have scraped this BS off the bottom of his cowboy boots, because it smells a lot like Texas fertilizer.
You see, far from being a Ponzi scheme, Social Security is insurance – insurance that guarantees a dignified retirement for hard-working Americans in our old age. Without it, we would likely be treated to scenes of the elderly living in cardboard boxes and digging through dumpsters for their meals.
The premiums for this insurance are paid by withholding less than six percent of an individuals annual income up to $106,000 per year.
Currently, Social Security has a $2.5 trillion surplus, but given the impending retirement of Baby Boomers, its estimated that the program will not be able to make full benefit payments in 25 or 30 years. However, contrary to what Teapublicans would have you believe, Social Security can be easily fixed with relatively minor tweaking. (As with all insurance plans, the premiums for Social Security need to be increased from time to time.)
One option is to raise the income cap to include income above $106,000. (This hasn’t been done since the Reagan administration in the 1980s.) Another option is to remove the cap altogether, which would assure the solvency of Social Security far into the future. Yet another is to limit benefits to only those who actually need them retirees with annual household incomes of less than $30,000, for example.
Social Security can be fixed. But not if the media and voters keep listening to Teapublican lies.