Tuition plan a fraud

I’ve often wondered how Washington state’s GET program for prepaid tuition can promise its returns of matching the education system’s rate of inflation. Now we know it’s a Ponzi scheme by their own admission – maybe not on the level with Bernie Madoff, but similar. Larry Lee, director of the program, was quoted recently in a Wall Street Journal article that, so far, the plan is “not really having to sell off equities,” but instead is using new cash inflows to make payments.

From Wikipedia, a Ponzi scheme is “a fraudulent investment operation that pays returns to investors from their own money or money paid by subsequent investors rather than from profit” – their own cash inflows.

When the party stops, who will be left holding the bag? We, the taxpayers. Time to look closer at this program.

Scott Draper

Liberty Lake