Ezra Klein is the twenty something leftwing hack who has never had a real job in the private sector beyond the lefty think tank and pundit shops in DC. Somehow or another he got a cushy gig pretending to be objective at the Washington Post where he continues to mouth off on economic policy from a decidedly left-wing bent.It’s gotten so bad that Ezra Klein is forced to play word games and lie to win an argument on social security. Klein wants to win an argument against the Republicans on social security. So what does he do? He has to reinvent a new definition of ponzi scheme.Klein relies on liberal blogger/polisci guy Jonathan Bernstein to give him his definition, which is to define a ponzi scheme as “a fraud that relies on new investors being unaware of the program’s financing mechanism.” And OH MY GOSH!!!!! social security is fully transparent therefore it cannot be a Ponzi scheme.EZRA IS BETTER THAN WELL WHO CARES. HE WINS!!!!! Except he only wins by willfully changing the definition of a ponzi scheme. I say willfully because he can’t be that stupid can he?

From the American Heritage Dictionary:

a form of fraud in which belief in the success of a nonexistent enterprise is fostered by the payment of quick returns to the first investors from money invested by later investors.

From Webster’s Dictionary:

an investment swindle in which some early investors are paid off with money put up by later ones in order to encourage more and bigger risk

From Wikipedia:

A Ponzi scheme is a fraudulent investment operation that pays returns to separate investors, not from any actual profit earned by the organization, but from their own money or money paid by subsequent investors.

And my personal favorite comes from the Securities and Exchange Commission:

A Ponzi scheme is an investment fraud that involves the payment of purported returns to existing investors from funds contributed by new investors. Ponzi scheme organizers often solicit new investors by promising to invest funds in opportunities claimed to generate high returns with little or no risk.

Social security takes my money that I am forced to invest in the system and pays it to people who were forced into the system before me. The only major difference with a dictionary definition ponzi scheme is that the system is not designed to incentivize future risk on my part. But then it does not have to because I am forced into the program. And it sounds pretty damn close to the SEC definition of a ponzi scheme.Ezra Klein can manipulate all the words he wants, but when you get to the actual definition of a ponzi scheme, social security sure as heck looks a lot like one.By the way, exit point: it is still a ponzi scheme by Klein’s definition isn’t it? How many people really know that their social security is funded based on IOU’s? Don’t people think their social security money goes into a separate, segregated fund when it really is being used to fund the federal government? I betcha most are under that impression.