I apologize upfront for taking a shot at the ideas expressed by Froma Harrop, syndicated columnist, about Social Security. It's old stuff, but liberals are nothing if not persistent.

Yes, unlike the Gang of Four, there really is a Froma Harrop. Several weeks ago she wrote a column that is a typical argument presented by liberals of her caste and station in life about issues they desperately desire to misperceive.

Since I couldn't make this up, I'll just quote her.

"A Ponzi scheme is a fraud in which early investors are paid off with funds raised from later ones. Why isn't Social Security a Ponzi scheme?

"First off, Social Security is a form of insurance, not an investment vehicle."

It has recently become popular to attach the term "insurance" to Social Security. Most Americans don't think of Social Security as insurance, which is exactly the reason the term is being used.

Insurance is something you buy and hope you never have to use. The term implies an expense you will hopefully never have to recoup. It is a perfect phrase if you wish to turn Social Security into just another welfare program in which "the rich" would never receive a dime because they have never suffered the "accident" of poverty.

Ms. Harrop continues, "Social Security is mostly a pay-as-you go program. For the last 25 years, though, workers have been putting more into it than was needed to support current beneficiaries. This was to provide a cushion for a surge of later retirees, the baby boom generation - and a very un-Ponzi-like thing to do. The Social Security Trust Fund keeps that extra money in U.S. Treasury securities, which pay interest."

The government garnishes your income at the rate of 15.3 percent. This is real wealth that you have worked for. The government took that money and spent it before the year was out in which you paid it. They then wrote a number on a piece of paper and handed it to another branch of the government, obligating some future government to pay that money back, plus interest. The money they promise to pay you back with and the interest on the money they took from you don't exist except on paper.

When the Social Security promises become due, the government could pretend to pay you with the money they pretended to be real, and you would like to pretend to pay your utility bill with the government's pretend funds, but your utility company sold you real electricity and they want real wealth to continue to produce it.

So the government will have to tax future generations for their own Social Security PLUS all the surplus you paid PLUS the interest on the money you paid. If future generations will not, or cannot, pay these taxes, then the government must pay your Social Security by creating money. This is usually done by making money more worthless.

You will find that your Social Security check won't buy anything real.

Your parents and their parents were able to cash their Social Security checks for real electricity and real food. They got into the system before you did.

Shazaam! By definition, that is a Ponzi scheme.

Ms. Harrop shows us her reasonable side. "Medicare does need reform, but Social Security is humming along. It is clean, simple and successful, which drives enemies of government programs crazy."

By dollars paid, the U.S. Social Security program is the largest government program in the world and the largest single item in the federal budget. It is based on a premise that the Supreme Court originally thought was unconstitutional. Saint Roosevelt lied about the program, and politicians have continued to lie about it ever since.

Remember Mr. Gore's Social Security "lockbox?" This was before he became a modern Jeremiah, calling us all to repentance for our environmental sins, so you may not recall that if elected he would not have allowed Social Security surpluses to be spent. He forgot to mention that this is impossible.

However, Ms. Harrop does remind us that, "Telling lies about Social Security is a First Amendment right."

Froma was once the business editor for The New York Times News Service, which tells us more about the media's economic knowledge than we really wanted to know.