Submitted by Harry Eagar, May 10, 2007 14:08

Let's see. I pay 7% and my employer matches that, and we do it for 40 years. Then, I should live so long, I get some of it back. That's not a transfer program. At least, not to the recipient of the Social Security check. Unless, of course, I die early and my widow gets payments. Then it's an insurance program. If this economist is really defining Social Security as 'living off the government,' and it's not just that Stossel and the editors of the Sun are sadly confused, then he's a nut, like the Reagan-era economists who defined government deficits as 'savings.' Sheesh.

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