“Does the name Ponzi all of a sudden come to mind?” It shouldn’t.

In 2011, then Texas Governor and presidential candidate, Rick Perry, made headlines at the Republican presidential debate when he doubled down on his previous claims Social Security is a Ponzi scheme.

Fellow candidate, Mitt Romney, accused Perry of scaring seniors by using the phrase, comparing their Social Security benefits to the fraudulent returns investment broker, Charles Ponzi, made to his investors–investors who were actually being paid with the funds given to him by new investors.

During the debate, Perry defended himself by saying, “[Social Security] has been called a Ponzi scheme by many people long before me.”

He has a point. Perry was not the first to compare Social Security to the scam that made Ponzi a household name (President Trump also called Social Security a Ponzi scheme in his 2000 book). He certainly wasn’t the last, either.

Several political candidates and legislators have made the very same claim since–most recently, Budget Director Mick Mulvaney.

With so many of our leaders making this comparison–especially at a time when the Trust Funds are headed toward serious financial trouble–Americans are wondering if there’s any truth to the claim.

A Ponzi scheme is a financial scam in which its broker collects money from a group of investors promising extremely high returns on

investment. Instead of investing that money as agreed, the broker keeps or spends it as he chooses, stringing investors along to keep them from reclaiming their funds. As new investors contribute, their funds are used to pay old investors. But, as the number of investors on board increases, more and more new investors are needed to pay them.

In most cases, this scheme falls apart quickly–the broker eventually can’t find enough new investors to sustain payments to old investors and the old investors start lining up to collect their returns and remove their money from the broker–money that doesn’t exist because it was used to pay other investors.

A notable exception is Bernie Madoff, the mastermind behind the single largest financial fraud in U.S. history. Unlike most Ponzi schemers, Madoff swindled $20 billion from his investors between the 1970s and 2008 when he finally got caught. Typically, the con artists operating this scam can’t maintain it anywhere near as long as Madoff.

Social Security, on the other hand, is an intergenerational pay-as-you-go system where current workers contribute to the Trust Funds via the payroll tax and those funds go directly toward paying the benefits of retired workers.

In the sense that one group contributes money for their “retirement savings” and that money is used to pay the retirement benefits of the last group of contributors, it isn’t a totally wild comparison–especially since the “new investors” are dwindling and the “old investors” are growing in number, causing many of the financial woes facing Social Security today.

But after that, comparisons between Ponzi and Social Security fall flat. Conflating the two fails to acknowledge key differences between an illegal financial con and one of our most successful and beloved social programs.

For starters, Ponzi schemes are unsustainable and keep investors in the dark about where their money goes until the inevitable collapse. The federal government–generally considered to have the best credit around–has never defaulted on its payments to Social Security beneficiaries since it was enacted in the 1930s. If Social Security was a Ponzi scheme, it would make Madoff’s offenses look like child’s play. Social Security is also financially transparent, providing reports to the public every year.

Social Security makes no promises about high returns to contributors. It doesn’t mislead workers about what’s being done with their benefits and what they can expect to collect in retirement.

Money contributed to the Trust Funds are backed by Treasury bonds and the full faith and credit of the United States, which as previously stated, has never failed in over 80 years. There are no assets backing investments made to Ponzi schemes. The broker steals the principle, and all other income is immediately paid to prior investors to keep them on the hook.

Critics of Social Security look to the looming insolvency of Social Security as proof of the instability of the program. In truth, the factors contributing to this crisis are many–not one of which is the fault of the program itself.

Changing demographics are partially to blame. As the population ages, a much larger pool of retirees are drawing benefits. With the retirement of the Baby Boomer generation, we will see our largest group of Social Security beneficiaries yet.

At the same time, there are fewer workers to support them. Unemployment, lower birth rates, rising disability, and stagnant wages all have a hand in the disparity between retirees and workers we are seeing today. Blaming Social Security itself for these demographic shifts is unreasonable.

What we can do is reform Social Security to account for these changes. There are multiple pieces of legislation in Congress right now to do just that (including the Social Security Expansion Act, which would not only extend solvency without cuts, but would allow for benefit expansion).

A better comparison is to liken Social Security to any other insurance program–that is, after all, the original intent of Social Security. We pay a little on each paycheck so that when we need it, we can collect. The amount each beneficiary collects is determined by a set formula affected by how much you made, how long you worked, and when you claimed. Because of these factors, some beneficiaries collect more and others less–this a feature of all insurance programs.

This isn’t to say that Social Security doesn’t have its problems. It’s a fact that without changes, very soon it will be unable to provide 100% of scheduled benefits.

But these problems are intertwined with our changing demographics, our economic landscape, and entitlement legislation. With smart reform, we can address every one of these contributing factors. Simply cutting Social Security and raising eligibility requirements won’t fix these underlying issues. All that does is make life harder for beneficiaries who contributed that money all their working lives.

Above all, Ponzi schemes are crimes. The point of a Ponzi scheme is to enrich the operator at the expense of investors. Social Security is a program a majority of Americans support–a program that was invented to do the exact opposite of a Ponzi scheme.

Social Security is a program we all pay for not just to ensure ourselves a secure retirement, but to make sure every hard-working American who gave their time and labor to make this country function is taken care of in return.

So, “does the name Ponzi all of a sudden come to mind?”

No. Not at all.