# Eight False Things The Public “Knows” Prior To Election Day **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [October 27, 2010, 7:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/eight-false-things-the-public-knows-prior-to-election-day/558572 "2010-10-27T19:38:55Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Markxxx](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/5daacb/32.png) [@Markxxx](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Markxxx)\ **Post date:** [October 28, 2010, 5:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/eight-false-things-the-public-knows-prior-to-election-day/558572/41 "2010-10-28T17:39:14Z")
You can put a spin on anything you want. Creating jobs, for instance is 100% meaningless. Unless you create a job that was 100% equal or better to a lost job, you’ve accomplished nothing. In Illinois for instance, we have “Put Illinois To Work.” Almost all those jobs were created by cutting hours from other governmental programs. So in otherwords jobs were created by cutting hours from other people. Net result was few job if any actually created. The fact the OP examples finds no fault or minimizes the Democratic roles for the last two yeas shows how ANYONE can put a spin on anything. Yes, the Democrats didn’t create this mess, but they were elected to FIX IT. They were NOT elected to say, “I’ll try” or “It’s not my fault.” But that is what most of them are saying. Numbers can be slanted and expressed anyway to prove or disprove any point you want to make. The bottom line is the economy sucks. It doesn’t matter WHO did this, we need it fixed. It’s like having your kid break his arm and instead of taking him to the hospital you yell at him for not having known better. ---
**Author:** ![Tom\_Tildrum](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/e95f7d/32.png) [@Tom\_Tildrum](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tom_Tildrum)\ **Post date:** [October 28, 2010, 5:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/eight-false-things-the-public-knows-prior-to-election-day/558572/42 "2010-10-28T17:50:28Z")
> [@Markxxx](#): > > It’s like having your kid break his arm and instead of taking him to the hospital you yell at him for not having known better. Well, my father would do both. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [October 28, 2010, 5:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/eight-false-things-the-public-knows-prior-to-election-day/558572/43 "2010-10-28T17:52:50Z")
> [@Markxxx](#): > > It’s like having your kid break his arm and instead of taking him to the hospital you yell at him for not having known better. [It’s Captain Hindsight!](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coon_2:_Hindsight) ---
**Author:** ![RickJay](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/bb73d2/32.png) [@RickJay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RickJay)\ **Post date:** [October 28, 2010, 6:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/eight-false-things-the-public-knows-prior-to-election-day/558572/44 "2010-10-28T18:02:02Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#): > > Anyone care to dispute these claims? (If you click the link, they’re eached backed up by further links to various newspaper articles, etc.) Most are true, though deliberately simplistic or… er, optimistic, I guess. But this verges on the outright dishonest: **“6) Health care reform costs $1 trillion. Reality: The health care reform reduces government deficits by $138 billion.”** There are two obvious problems with claiming that this is a busted myth. For one thing, the two statements are not contradictory; it’s quite plausible that the proposed health care system could cost a trillion bucks but still be $X less than current government outlays in health care. Secondly - and I cannot believe I have to say this - the health care bill HASN’T TAKEN EFFECT YET. There is nobody on this planet who is sane, smart AND hoenst about the issue who can state with authority that they knew precisely the new health care plan will “cost,” either in absolute or opportunity terms. ---
**Author:** ![iamthewalrus\_3](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/258eb7/32.png) [@iamthewalrus\_3](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/iamthewalrus_3)\ **Post date:** [October 28, 2010, 6:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/eight-false-things-the-public-knows-prior-to-election-day/558572/45 "2010-10-28T18:14:33Z")
> [@Damuri\_Ajashi](#): > > Accounting trick? You do realize that federal debt is considered the safest investment in the world, right? You knew that, right? Sure I understand that. You do realize that writing yourself an IOU doesn’t mean you actually have any money, right? In the past, the government was collecting more money under the Social Security than it was paying out, and it used that extra to pay for other obligations. In the future, it will have to pay out more money under the Social Security label than it’s taking in (unless it cuts benefits), so it will have to come up with money from some other source. That other source will be raised taxes on working citizens (or the non-working very rich. It doesn’t make any headway to raise taxes on retired people receiving Social Security because that’s effectively just reducing their SS benefits). But now we run into the same demographic problems that caused the Social Security issues in the first place. Too many retirees, not enough workers, no assets saved. Government bonds don’t make a whit of difference in any of those categories. ---
**Author:** ![foolsguinea](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/foolsguinea/32/14751_2.png) [@foolsguinea](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/foolsguinea)\ **Post date:** [October 28, 2010, 6:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/eight-false-things-the-public-knows-prior-to-election-day/558572/46 "2010-10-28T18:47:36Z")
> [@Mr.Moto](#): > > Pardon me - but if you are spouting talking points, you ought to be open to talking about them in detail. > > Regarding Social Security - the aforementioned trust fund is in the form of government bonds. Previous Congresses took the surplus money and spent it on current government operating expenditures, giving the Social Security System a special bond it kept in a filing cabinet somewhere. > > When Social Security no longer runs surpluses (which will happen permanently in 2015), the Treasury no longer gets that little kick of extra revenue. When Social Security payouts start to run higher than payroll tax collections, those bonds will be cashed in - and the Treasury will take money from the General Fund to pay them off. > > And the fact that Social Security is completely sound for at least 25 more years isn’t exactly comforting for most voters, who know that for Social Security to be made sound for the long term massive changes need to be made in the program. > > I’m 40. Do you think I’m comforted when I hear that Social Security is sound for another 25 years? And this is whose fault? Social Security was originally pay-as-you-go. The Trust Fund was invented in the 1980’s, [by radical Objectivist Alan Greenspan.](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_Security_Trust_Fund#History_of_the_Social_Security_Trust_Fund) The fact that other taxes must now go up to repay the fund is downplayed by every politician to a disturbing degree. ---
**Author:** ![Damuri\_Ajashi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/898d66/32.png) [@Damuri\_Ajashi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Damuri_Ajashi)\ **Post date:** [October 28, 2010, 6:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/eight-false-things-the-public-knows-prior-to-election-day/558572/47 "2010-10-28T18:48:26Z")
> [@Barkis\_is\_Willin](#): > > I don’t know about this reality…specifically that the stimulus raised employment by 1.4 and 3.3 million jobs. That’s quite a range given in their reality. > There’s the infamous forecast that with the proposed stimulus, unemployment (which was ~7.5% at the time) would top out at 8%. In actual reality, unemployment has hovered around 10% for the last year. > If you want to say the stimulus didn’t work because it wasn’t enough, so be it. That forecast wasn’t from the CBO. ---
**Author:** ![Damuri\_Ajashi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/898d66/32.png) [@Damuri\_Ajashi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Damuri_Ajashi)\ **Post date:** [October 28, 2010, 6:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/eight-false-things-the-public-knows-prior-to-election-day/558572/48 "2010-10-28T18:50:20Z")
> [@ITR\_champion](#): > > Obviously everyone knows that I’m generally sympathetic to your viewpoint and I’ll be voting for [Rick Waugh](http://www.rickwaugh.com/) on Tuesday, but I’m sick of hearing this sort of claim. Estimates about how many jobs the stimulus “saved” are so crude as to be virtually meaningless. You can’t do a controlled experiment on the point, so all you can do is use economic models, which might or might not be accurate. But suppose, for the sake of argument, that the stimulus package did save that many jobs. > > It cost $878 billion. Anyone with a calculator can verify, if the lower estimate of jobs saved is right, the stimuls saved one job for every $627,000. For the upper estimate, one job for every $226,000. Not a terribly good figure either way. > > One can argue that in January of '09 we were heading into an economic tailspin and only a massive stimulus package could pull us out. If anyone wants to argue that, go right ahead. But clearly we cannot say that the stimulus money was well-used if the purpose was to make jobs. We didn’t spend the whole of the stimulus on salaries. We have things to show for it like roads and bridges. ---
**Author:** ![Damuri\_Ajashi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/898d66/32.png) [@Damuri\_Ajashi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Damuri_Ajashi)\ **Post date:** [October 28, 2010, 6:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/eight-false-things-the-public-knows-prior-to-election-day/558572/49 "2010-10-28T18:51:59Z")
> [@puddleglum](#): > > 1. The bank bailout was passed in a Democratic congress which included Obama, they share responsibility with the Bush administration for this program. > 2. There is no way of knowing whether the stimulus worked or not. The CBO has a model that increased spending leads to lower unempolyment. Spending was increased and the model said that unemployment was lowered. Whether the model was correct or not, we have no way of knowing. In a global economy it is impossible to seperate one input from the myriad of other factors. The CBO guessed about how the stimulus affected the economy and skepticism of their guess is perfectly rational. The Obama administration had a prediction about how the stimulus would affect the economy. The unemployment after the stimulus was in actuality higher than the administration’s prediction of what it would be sans stimulus. Thus on the Obama administration’s terms it was a failure. What would have happened with a different stimulus package or none at all is unknowable. This person’s attempt to present speculation and guess work as fact is an insult to his reader’s intelligence. The modelling that measured the employment effects of the stimulus is far more robust than the model that the Republicans used for years to show that tax cuts raised tax revenue. There are different levels of confidence in models and this sort of stuff is never 100% but its good enough that you can assume that its correct. ---
**Author:** ![puddleglum](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/puddleglum/32/137_2.png) [@puddleglum](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/puddleglum)\ **Post date:** [October 28, 2010, 7:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/eight-false-things-the-public-knows-prior-to-election-day/558572/50 "2010-10-28T19:23:49Z")
The CBO has built a model of the economy so accurate that it knows precisely the amount of employment created given a certain amount of stimulus? Perhaps whoever designed the model can design one that predicts NFL games and we can pay off the deficit with the gambling winnings. This should be a piece of cake since an NFL game is much less complicated than the entire economy. The CBO model is a guess. It is probably a good guess since the CBO has many smart people there, but guesses are not evidence. ---
**Author:** ![Happy\_Fun\_Ball](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/happy_fun_ball/32/17664_2.png) [@Happy\_Fun\_Ball](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Happy_Fun_Ball)\ **Post date:** [October 28, 2010, 7:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/eight-false-things-the-public-knows-prior-to-election-day/558572/51 "2010-10-28T19:50:47Z")
> [@iamthewalrus\_3](#): > > Sure I understand that. You do realize that writing yourself an IOU doesn’t mean you actually have any money, right? > > In the past, the government was collecting more money under the Social Security than it was paying out, and it used that extra to pay for other obligations. In the future, it will have to pay out more money under the Social Security label than it’s taking in (unless it cuts benefits), so it will have to come up with money from some other source. That other source will be raised taxes on working citizens (or the non-working very rich. It doesn’t make any headway to raise taxes on retired people receiving Social Security because that’s effectively just reducing their SS benefits). > > But now we run into the same demographic problems that caused the Social Security issues in the first place. Too many retirees, not enough workers, no assets saved. Government bonds don’t make a whit of difference in any of those categories. Where would you have preferred that this money had been invested? US Government bonds are one of the most stable investments in the world, if not the most stable. One of the reasons for this is that the US dollar is the basis of the world economy; many currencies are pegged to the dollar and commodities world wide are priced in dollars. If the US government defaults on the bonds issued to social security, what would this do to the world economy, the dollar, and the economy of the US? Even now, when the return from government bonds are near an all time low, demand is near an all time high. People world wide are clamoring for our debt as the safest investment around. So what should it have been invested in? ---
**Author:** ![Sam\_Stone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Sam\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sam_Stone)\ **Post date:** [October 29, 2010, 12:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/eight-false-things-the-public-knows-prior-to-election-day/558572/52 "2010-10-29T00:02:24Z")
> [@](#): > > **1) President Obama tripled the deficit.** > Reality: Bush’s last budget had a $1.416 trillion deficit. Obama’s first budget reduced that to $1.29 trillion. Real Reality: While it’s true that Bush rang up a big deficit, most of that was one-time spending on TARP and the stimulus, and revenue loss from the recession. Obama took that bad situation, and made it worse by ramping up government spending in almost every category. Almost 300 billion dollars annually was added to the discretionary budget between 2008 and 2010. > [@](#): > > **2) President Obama raised taxes, which hurt the economy.** > Reality: Obama cut taxes. 40% of the “stimulus” was wasted on tax cuts which only create debt, which is why it was so much less effective than it could have been. Real Reality: I don’t hear people complaining about Obama raising taxes, other than the taxes he _plans_ to raise; expiring the Bush tax cuts, cap and trade, etc. Do you have some quote from people on the right claiming that Obama has raised taxes? This smells like a smokescreen to me. > [@](#): > > **3) President Obama bailed out the banks.** > Reality: While many people conflate the “stimulus” with the bank bailouts, the bank bailouts were requested by President Bush and his Treasury Secretary, former Goldman Sachs CEO Henry Paulson. (Paulson also wanted the bailouts to be “non-reviewable by any court or any agency.”) The bailouts passed and began before the 2008 election of President Obama. Real Reality: Obama was wholly in favor of this, and since he became President he continued the pattern of bailing out troubled firms. Again, this sounds like misdirection to me - the invention of a claim that’s easy to refute. > [@](#): > > **4) The stimulus didn’t work.** > Reality: The stimulus worked, but was not enough. In fact, according to the Congressional Budget Office, the stimulus raised employment by between 1.4 million and 3.3 million jobs. Real Reality: There is no evidence whatsoever that the stumulus worked. The CBO’s report was created by re-running exactly the same predictive model that was run to generate the original estimate of jobs that would be created. Calling this a ‘fact’ is an outright lie. The director of the CBO, when questioned, admitted that the CBO actually has no idea whether any jobs were created. If you think the stimulus was responsible for job creation, here’s a troubling fact for you: Over half of the jobs that have been created since 2008 were created in one state - Texas. Since Texas didn’t get half the stimulus funds, please explain that. While you’re at it, you can explain why California, which DID get a large percentage of stimulus funds, lost an equivalent number of jobs over the same period. > [@](#): > > **5) Businesses will hire if they get tax cuts.** > Reality: A business hires the right number of employees to meet demand. Having extra cash does not cause a business to hire, but a business that has a demand for what it does will find the money to hire. Businesses want customers, not tax cuts. Real Reality: Again, this sounds like a claim someone made up so they could refute it. The argument today isn’ that businesses are overtaxed - it’s that the government has created a climate of uncertainty that makes it impossible for businesses to make long-term plans. Of course you can find Republicans who think business taxes should be lowered - Republicans always think that. But almost all of them think the problem right now is that businesses can’t plan because they don’t know what the tax and regulatory structure of the country is going to be next year and the year after that, because this government is activist and keeps changing the playing field. > [@](#): > > **6) Health care reform costs $1 trillion.** > Reality: The health care reform reduces government deficits by $138 billion. Real reality: This is a load of crap. The only reason the CBO said that health care reform would reduce the deficit by that amount is because the Democrats framed the question in a way that forced the CBO’s hand. The actual CBO report has an unusual section in it that basically calls it all a bunch of bullshit. For example, they explicitly point out that this number assumes that there won’t be a doctor pay adjustment for Medicare when clearly there will be, and that 500 billion will be found in cuts to Medicare, which no one believes. They also point out that the game was rigged by setting a 10-year projection then structuring the bill so that there would be ten years of tax receipts and only six or seven years of benefits paid out. It’s a sham. And since then, we’ve discovered that the funding for the interim health care plan was about half of what it needed to be, and will shortly run out of money. > [@](#): > > \*\* > 7) Social Security is a Ponzi scheme, is “going broke,” people live longer, fewer workers per retiree, etc.\*\* > Reality: Social Security has run a surplus since it began, has a trust fund in the trillions, is completely sound for at least 25 more years and cannot legally borrow so cannot contribute to the deficit (compare that to the military budget!) Life expectancy is only longer because fewer babies die; people who reach 65 live about the same number of years as they used to. Real reality: That’s how Ponzi schemes work. They look great in the early years, which is what attracts everyone into them. It’s the late entrants that get screwed. As for the ‘trust fund’, it doesn’t exist. Government spent it. That money will have to come out of the general budget. > [@](#): > > **8) Government spending takes money out of the economy.** > Reality: Government is We, the People and the money it spends is on We, the People. Many people do not know that it is government that builds the roads, airports, ports, courts, schools and other things that are the soil in which business thrives. Many people think that all government spending is on “welfare” and “foreign aid” when that is only a small part of the government’s budget. Real reality: Government spending takes money out of the _market economy_ and redirects it based on where government thinks it should go, rather than where the people who actually had the money thought it should go. Your argument assumes that government is equally efficient as the market, and that redirecting all that money does no harm. But really, that’s the whole basis of the philosophical divide between right and left, so you don’t get to arbitrarily assume it’s true. ---
**Author:** ![Richard\_Parker](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/35a633/32.png) [@Richard\_Parker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Richard_Parker)\ **Post date:** [October 29, 2010, 12:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/eight-false-things-the-public-knows-prior-to-election-day/558572/53 "2010-10-29T00:41:21Z")
> [@Sam\_Stone](#): > > If you think the stimulus was responsible for job creation, here’s a troubling fact for you: Over half of the jobs that have been created since 2008 were created in one state - Texas. This seemed like a good point to me, until I actually dug into the numbers. Since 1970, job growth in Texas has been a little less than double the overall US rate. In 2006, it was quadruple. In 2006, Texas constituted a little over 25% of the overall job market. Texas also never experienced a housing price bubble, with median home prices being something like 50% the national average, and not experiencing a spike in the '00s. Knowing that, what proportion of new jobs created in Texas would you expect of a national program that attempts to increase job growth nationwide during a recession caused in part by the collapse of the housing bubble? And yet…even though we should not be surprised to learn that your factoid is true given what we know about Texas in the US economy, is your factoid true? Were about a million jobs created in Texas since 2008? ---
**Author:** ![Richard\_Parker](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/35a633/32.png) [@Richard\_Parker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Richard_Parker)\ **Post date:** [October 29, 2010, 12:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/eight-false-things-the-public-knows-prior-to-election-day/558572/54 "2010-10-29T00:47:35Z")
wrong link ---
**Author:** ![Happy\_Fun\_Ball](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/happy_fun_ball/32/17664_2.png) [@Happy\_Fun\_Ball](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Happy_Fun_Ball)\ **Post date:** [October 29, 2010, 2:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/eight-false-things-the-public-knows-prior-to-election-day/558572/55 "2010-10-29T02:12:40Z")
> [@Sam\_Stone](#): > > Real reality: That’s how Ponzi schemes work. They look great in the early years, which is what attracts everyone into them. It’s the late entrants that get screwed. As for the ‘trust fund’, it doesn’t exist. Government spent it. That money will have to come out of the general budget. Wait a minute Sam, are you implying that the bonds held by Social Security are worthless? Is the US government going to not honor these bonds? Do you really think that the US government would risk a downgrade by doing so? Or are you just saying that when these bonds come due that the US government is going to have to find the money to pay them back? If this is what you are saying, what exactly is the problem? They are paying back bonds all the time; what makes the bonds held by Social Security any different than those held by China (which is owed about 1/3 or what is owed to the Social Security Trust Fund) or Japan (again, they have about 1/3 the debt ownership of the Trust fund). When you throw in the UK and Brazil, these four countries are owed more than the Social Security Trust fund; should they be worried that their money doesn’t exist, that the US government spent it? I have never understood the right-wing argument that the Bonds, Notes and Bills held by the Social Security Trust fund is worthless, why don’t you explain it to me? ---
**Author:** ![gonzomax](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/e8c25b/32.png) [@gonzomax](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gonzomax)\ **Post date:** [October 29, 2010, 2:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/eight-false-things-the-public-knows-prior-to-election-day/558572/56 "2010-10-29T02:29:31Z")
> [@Markxxx](#): > > You can put a spin on anything you want. Creating jobs, for instance is 100% meaningless. Unless you create a job that was 100% equal or better to a lost job, you’ve accomplished nothing. > > In Illinois for instance, we have “Put Illinois To Work.” Almost all those jobs were created by cutting hours from other governmental programs. So in otherwords jobs were created by cutting hours from other people. Net result was few job if any actually created. > > The fact the OP examples finds no fault or minimizes the Democratic roles for the last two yeas shows how ANYONE can put a spin on anything. > > Yes, the Democrats didn’t create this mess, but they were elected to FIX IT. They were NOT elected to say, “I’ll try” or “It’s not my fault.” > > But that is what most of them are saying. > > Numbers can be slanted and expressed anyway to prove or disprove any point you want to make. > > The bottom line is the economy sucks. It doesn’t matter WHO did this, we need it fixed. > > It’s like having your kid break his arm and instead of taking him to the hospital you yell at him for not having known better. It took Bush 8 years to screw it all up. What did you give Obama, 6 months, a year? He did not start off from day one. He had to form a cabinet and then get his nominees approved. That process was made very difficult for Repubs. Then he had to formulate plans and set them in motion. Bills like heathcare took a lot of time to write. He had to get with military leaders to enact his Iraq and Afghanistan plans. He had to nominate judges . Yet somehow you think it was plenty of time to fix the mess. By the way he had a little banking crisis to deal with immediately. ---
**Author:** ![andy9000](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/ac91a4/32.png) [@andy9000](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/andy9000)\ **Post date:** [October 29, 2010, 4:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/eight-false-things-the-public-knows-prior-to-election-day/558572/57 "2010-10-29T04:07:25Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#): > > [By Dave Johnson of the Institute for America’s Future:](http://institute.ourfuture.org/blog-entry/2010104222/false-things-public-knows-they-go-vote) > > Anyone care to dispute these claims? (If you click the link, they’re eached backed up by further links to various newspaper articles, etc.) > > And if he’s right, **why** do people believe these things? i guess the easy answer is that the right wing media has been so affective. But i think it’s more complex than that and during rough economic times people are more susceptible to believing in crazy stuff. I think we’re living in an age of ignorance. Just look at how popular someone like Glenn Beck is. the media has polarized the country and divided everything into right and left. So people just retreat to their idealogical corners. ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [October 29, 2010, 4:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/eight-false-things-the-public-knows-prior-to-election-day/558572/58 "2010-10-29T04:26:56Z")
> [@](#): > > 1. Social Security is a Ponzi scheme, is “going broke,” people live longer, fewer workers per retiree, etc. > Reality: Social Security has run a surplus since it began, has a trust fund in the trillions, is completely sound for at least 25 more years and cannot legally borrow so cannot contribute to the deficit (compare that to the military budget!) Life expectancy is only longer because fewer babies die; people who reach 65 live about the same number of years as they used to. I think this one is pretty suspect. People can say that buying treasury bonds is an investment but it’s hard to see how that’s true when it’s the United States government buying the bonds - they’re the same entity that will be paying the money owed on those bonds. I also question the fact that the life expectancy of 65 year olds has remained constant. I don’t have a cite handy but anecdotely it seems that life support technology that keep people alive by artificial means has become a lot more common. ---
**Author:** ![Gyrate](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gyrate/32/3588_2.png) [@Gyrate](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gyrate)\ **Post date:** [October 29, 2010, 9:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/eight-false-things-the-public-knows-prior-to-election-day/558572/59 "2010-10-29T09:36:47Z")
> [@Sam\_Stone](#): > > Real Reality: While it’s true that Bush rang up a big deficit, most of that was one-time spending on TARP and the stimulus, and revenue loss from the recession. Oh, and a few minor overseas _contretemps_, nothing really worth mentioning… ---
**Author:** ![Digital\_Stimulus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/aeb1de/32.png) [@Digital\_Stimulus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Digital_Stimulus)\ **Post date:** [October 29, 2010, 12:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/eight-false-things-the-public-knows-prior-to-election-day/558572/60 "2010-10-29T12:08:54Z")
> [@Gyrate](#): > > Oh, and a few minor overseas _contretemps_, nothing really worth mentioning… Not to mention Medicare D and 2 rounds of tax cuts. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/eight-false-things-the-public-knows-prior-to-election-day/558572.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/eight-false-things-the-public-knows-prior-to-election-day/558572.md?page=4)