The thing to quibble about in Root’s piece is his loose use of “Ponzi scheme”. In a true Ponzi scheme, early investments or investors actually do receive a positive real return, but those returns are funded largely by diverting funds from later investments or investors. When Root labels redistributionism and inflation as “Ponzi schemes”, he’s stretching the definition.
I would prefer that he use “Ponzi scheme” to describe only Social Security. Every libertarian needs to memorize the facts about Social Security’s returns to its very first beneficiary:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ida_May_Fuller. The story would make Bernie Madoff blush.
Tom Blanton is sputtering even more insults than usual; savvy readers can figure out for themselves what that says about the accuracy of my characterizations of his statements.
Blanton asks “would you rather I say ‘conservative’ instead of ‘Republican’?” Duh. You can call a butterfly “beautiful” or “colorful” or “gaudy” according to your taste, but if you call it a “caterpillar”, you’re just being deceptive — or implausibly obtuse.
Blanton “stands by” his comment that “Root acts like all of America’s problems started on the day Obama was inaugurated”. Of course, in Blanton-speak, “stand by” just means “repeat it, offer no evidence in response to the evidence demolishing it, and then vaguely vouch for the ‘tone’ I perceived”.
Let’s review Blanton’s assertions @2 again:
- Root is a “Republican”. Lie.
- “Root acts like all of America’s problems started on the day Obama was inaugurated.” Already demonstrated to be false, by me quoting Root’s discussion of government programs (like Medicare and the postal service) that obviously predated Obama by decades or even centuries.
- Root suggested that “the $100 trillion dollar national debt” was accumulated entirely under Obama. Now admitted by Blanton to be “out of context”.
