In practice it has turned out to be strongly redistributionist, but only because of its Ponzi game aspect, in which each generation takes more out than it put in. Well, the Ponzi game will soon be over, thanks to changing demographics, so that the typical recipient henceforth will get only about as much as he or she put in (and today’s young may well get less than they put in).
Of course we all recognize that bit of inflammatory scare-mongering from Gov. Rick Perry’s book “Fed Up!” in which he tells the inconvenient truth about Social Security that every American knows but no politician is forth-right enough to confront. That in its current state, it is doomed to fail and leave generations that had paid into it stuck without the return they were promised. In short: A Ponzi Scheme.
I knew he was too stupid to have thought of it all by himself.