Watchdogs say world’s richest man Elon Musk has ‘declared war on social security’
Watchdogs say world’s richest man Elon Musk has ‘declared war on social security’
"Elon Musk's commission is a plot to destroy our Social Security by giving it to Wall Street executives—so that you get nothing and they get everything," warned one advocate.
Summary
Elon Musk amplified Senator Mike Lee’s calls to overhaul Social Security, labeling it a “nightmare.”
Lee, known for advocating the elimination of Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid, criticized the program as deceptive and mismanaged.
Musk, co-chair of Trump’s advisory commission on cutting federal spending, faces accusations of aligning with GOP efforts to privatize or gut Social Security.
Advocacy groups denounce these moves as a threat to seniors and disabled Americans, warning that Republicans aim to shift earned benefits to Wall Street, despite broad public opposition to cuts or privatization.
Can we normalize saying "world's greediest man" instead of "world's richest man?"
yes
Worlds most successful thief
Id settle for worlds greediest thief
Let's normalize the richest being the greediest.
I think I know what you were trying to say, but the richest are the greediest. That's always been true....
It flabbergasts me that Musk, an unelected billionaire, has any input at all in policy decisions.
Just another day in the post-truth age. This and much more awaits in a society that allows a handful of algorithms unfettered editorial control over what people think.
It's just another day in the plutocracy that has probably run things the entire lifetime of "democracy".
The only difference is with MAGA the plutocracy no longer need to hide behind lobbyists, campaign financing, super PAC's, nepotism/cronyism, quid pro quo, virtue signaling about national security, etc to engage in corruption, loot the public coffers, and divert trillions to their own companies or cronies in the MIC or whatever.
The conservative propaganda machine has now successfully groomed and cultivated a mentally ill cult, who will let their king insert a microchip into their brains without a second thought... Hell, they'll probably hand over their life savings for the privilege.
Trump's just doing it in the open. Every president has had unelected advisors.
Not all advisors were so nakedly operating in their own self-interest.
Plenty of unelected people have a massive say in policy. We wouldn't get anything done if every bureaucrat had to be elected.
This specific unelected soon-to-be bureaucrat is fucking towel though.
This specific unelected soon-to-be bureaucrat is fucking towel though.
Hey now, that's not very fair, towels are at least useful and pretty good at wiping up shit. Phony Stark only ever makes messes and then wallows in the shit.
Yeah, but Musk doesn't even have any related talent or work experience. He's just a rich greedy POS.
Don't besmirch something so useful as a towel.
Sure he is unelected, but he paid Trump 75 billion
Doesn’t that entitle him to bankrupt your parents. They can move in with you.
N’est pas?
/s
Vrai, c'est domage.
75 million. It's surprisingly cheap to buy Trump.
It's a flaw in the system that must be corrected.
Yes, this. Who elected this asshole to anything?
A more interesting question is how do we fire him?
So, they plan on stealing the money I've put into it over my 25 year working career?
I know that's not exactly how it works, but yeah it feels like it's theft with extra steps if I never see benefits but had paid into it.
Hate to break it to you but that's not how social security works. The money you pay in now is used to pay for the benefits of the currently retired. It is not an investment fund that you are paying into with a guarantee of payments when you retire.
yeah more than likely they will use that as the impetus and try to do like bush junior changing it into a kind of 401k
Any billionaire should be open to a robin hood law, if you're going to violate the social contract so much that it's obliterated and you're no longer subject to law or criminal charges then you should also be exempt from its protections.
Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition, to wit: There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect.
-Frank Wilhoit
I had to look up who this was and found this. Thought it was interesting.
It would be a shame if everybody started believing that it's good to eat the rich
Establish a new national past time of stealing from billionaires to try to hit the high score, it would certainly be more exciting than baseball.
They certainly should not get to dictate anything about us. This jagoff does not even pay into it, so he can fuck RIGHT OFF.
Good job, assholes. You were worried about egg prices and obsessed with trans. And now this.
Modern problems require modern solutions. I'm not advocating anything but I'll leave this here in case anyone has not seen it yet.
https://www.cnn.com/2024/12/04/us/brian-thompson-united-healthcare-death/index.html
Man, I don't advocate violence (except when necessary), but I'm struggling to feel bad about this. I've had almost all major and many minor health insurance providers and UHC was above and beyond the worst, hands down, full stop. Just garbage.
Same. I've been saying for a while that I'm surprised this kind of thing doesn't happen more often. All it takes is one person deciding that their problems are a specific company's fault. One can imagine all sorts of reasons for that conclusion to be drawn. Tons of shootings happen for way more trivial reasons too.
Why struggle? Just don't feel bad. You don't owe them anything. Hell, advocate for this becoming a national holiday. "The day someone actually did something impactful"
I'm so happy that these fuckers will be looking behind their back constantly now. They know what they did to us, they know that their greed has a death toll.
Is it too much to wish that he dies during his next plastic surgery operation?
Go out and be the change you wanna see! 😂
Leave my social security alone, you prick. We pay into it, it is not an entitlement. If it is becoming unsustainable, then remove the cap.
These guys hope to make the US become a third world country. They have no idea how bad it can become if there is widespread poverty in America.
We pay into it, it is not an entitlement.
It is an entitlement because you pay for it.
The opposite would be means-tested, where you would have to qualify.
QUITE THE TIME TO DOUBLE DOWN ON THE HEARTLESS CEO BIT...
I'll never understand why billionaires hate OASDI...
The cap means no one pays more than 10.5k this year. That isn't even fucking pocket change to Musk or any billionaire.
their love of money overtakes their humanity. they lack empathy.
They never had any. They also never had any value to the Human race.
The most powerful people in the US acquired their power from privatizing Social Security in the form of retirement accounts.
The largest retirement account management companies are Vanguard, Blackrock, and State Street. They consolidate all of the power of the shares from all of the retirement accounts they manage, to give them board control of 89% of the S&P 500.
Those faceless firms are actually the ones who control the hardship index (price of food, housing, clothing, other essentials) that earned Trump so many “bad economy” votes.
The Misery index is about to go nuts
People like him have all the money they could ever need. This is about control, and punishing people they don't like (and those that don't fall in line and lick the boot).
Every dollar the working class has is a dollar they don't have to sell their labor to get.
They think the free market solves all problems. Anything the government does is bad and evil by definition.
Agreed. They are basically paying nothing into it.
They want us to pay into some privatized thing where they can take their fees and commissions.
One of the first thoughts I had with the election result was "welp, there goes my retirement". None of this surprises me even a little
What do they think is going to happen to all those old people who survive on just Social Security? Or disabled people? What do they think will be the attitude of a population that has even less financial and health security?
They are actively trying to create a world that will become much more dangerous for themselves.
The classic move is just to fuck over the NEXT batch, so the people drawing from it now are happy to vote Republican. “Fuck you, got mine” at its finest.
My stepmother years ago while sitting in front of her child: "I don't really care about climate change, I'll be dead by then!"
Easy, they'll just dump us in prisons where we'll be expected to pay for the cost of our involuntary stay. If I lose ssdi I become homeless, which is becoming increasingly illegal
It's a felony here in TN now!
That's the slick part: they don't expect that you will have any power to ever vote them out of office again so they can do whatever they want! It's that sort of brilliant radical thinking that has energized American voters to put these fascists back in power after their practice run!
Musk probably thinks these people will be instructed in how its the fault of the trans, the liberals, the POC, and the immigrant caravans that are pouring across the border every day.
He's probably not wrong. These people will be destitute, and vote for the qons even harder, because what have the Democrats ever done for the working class? 🙄
They can work the fields to replace all the deportees.
Go ahead, steal my hard earned contributions skum. Let's see how many desperate people you can piss off, we might actually see some real change.
Musk, enemy to mankind, has declared war on everyone.
Well, seeing as SSDI is my only source of income, guess I'll die homeless if that gets cut off.
Cool!
Musk, the new generation of robber baron
Conservatives have been wanting and trying to dismantle the SS since its inception.
I'm not that concerned just yet. There's a reason it's called the third rail of politics.
If I had to bet on the future outcome, they'll raise the contribution cap to around $300k, maybe cut benefits a bit, fixing the solvency problem for at least a generation or two.
I'd also bet on an immigration deal in a future administration. Getting more workers/contributors into the system.
It honestly wouldn't shock me if the Trump admin pivoted to amnesty just like Reagan. He's a lame duck from day one. He's not beholden to anything from the campaign trail. If he's gotta choose the adoration of his voter base vs the donor base, he'll choose the wealthy. He hates being excluded from the elites. You can't buy class. But you can be invited to their parties, their clubs, their scene. His working class base has nothing left to offer him.
What I don't get is why there is a cutoff such that the "contribution" that jerkoffs like Musk put in is basically negligible.
If anyone should pay and pay and pay some more, it's people like Musk. I like Bernie's idea of 100% tax above 999 million. Being a billionaire should not even be a thing.
Quick, someone order a bunch of guillotines from France before Trump's tariffs hit!
Nope sorry, we need them here.
The mob will bring back the British tradition of draw and quarter for this shit head.
Scaphism is older and more richly deserved.
George Carlin was spot on.
As a disabled person (barely) surviving on SSDI I'd like to suggest that when you're the one who starts a war then you become a legitimate military target.
Why’d he move here if he hates America so much?
They never try to make it better for the “natives”, they always try to make it better for themselves. Sometimes those improvements align, sometimes they don’t. They almost all try to pull up the ladder behind them in some way, but Musk is trying to pull up the ladder on everyone not white and independently wealthy.
The rich yes, immigrants no. Many immigrants come here because they believe in improving America and being a part of that. Their descendants are the ladder pullers oftentimes
Sure just make sure to send us our refund checks
Just some quick napkin math puts me at nearly 200,000 dollars in to social security since I started working.
At 4% compounded annually, let's call it 275,000 dollars.
Tax free, of course.
Anyone wanna take bets on when he'll become a trillionare?
Since the election I think his net worth grew from 0.1 to about 0.3 trillion. So at this rate he'll have stolen 1 trillion from others by early 2025, right?
