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From The Uptake -- Reich Debunks Six Big Lies About The Economy:

Is Social Security a Ponzi scheme as Republican Presidential candidate Rick Perry claims? Noted author and former U.S. Labor Secretary Robert Reich debunks that claim and five other lies the right-wing tells about taxes, government and the economy. The lies Reich debunks:

1) Tax cuts to the rich and corporations trickle down to the rest of us. (No it doesn't and it never has.)

2) If you shrink government you create jobs. (No, you get rid of jobs that way.)

3) High taxes on the rich hurts the economy. (No, the economy grew when the US did this under Eisenhower.)

4) Debt is to be avoided and it is mostly caused by Medicare. (No, if debt is properly used to grow the economy, it becomes a smaller part of the budget because of increased revenue and Medicare has the lowest overhead of any health insurance plan out there.)

5) Social Security is a Ponzi scheme (No, its solid for 26 years. Rick Perry is "lying through his teeth" says Reich. Social Security is solid beyond that if the rich pay the same percentage in social security taxes as the rest of us do.)

6) We need to tax the poor. (This is what Republicans have been proposing when they say any tax reform needs to involve all Americans because poor people pay no income tax. The poor have no money and taxing them will not solve our budget problems.)

The worst thing is, because these "facts" from the right-wing are repeated over and over, the media repeats them without challenging them and people accept them as truth. Reich says this is intentional.

"The greatest enemy we have is mass cynicism", said Reich. "When people really get to the point where they think nothing can be done, the other side wins. That's what they want, by the way. That's what they want. They want government because it is starved for money, because it is going to be underfunded - all the regulatory agencies - they want government at all levels to function so badly that people say 'Well government can't work. I told you.' And they also want politics to be so bad and so paralyzed that most Americans say 'Nothing can be done. I'm going to give up on our democracy'."

Reich was speaking at the Summit For A Fair Economy in Minneapolis, Minnesota on September 10, 2011.