Elon Musk’s nasty Social Security gambit
What is it with Elon Musk and Social Security? He clearly has a problem with the retirement account. Is he trying to cripple or even destroy the system that provides incomes for millions of older Americans? It sure looks like it.
Then, again, he and President Trump may be up to some other mischief, like further undermining Americans’ trust and faith in government across the board.
First, the animus. The “world’s richest man” and Trump administration emissary recently told podcaster Joe Rogan that Social Security was a “Ponzi scheme.” In fact, Musk said, it’s “the biggest Ponzi scheme of all time.”
A Ponzi scheme is an investment sleight-of-hand, and it’s illegal. Think Bernie Madoff, who, for decades, bilked thousands of trusting investors of upwards of $65 billion. After pleading guilty to 11 felonies in 2009, Madoff was sentenced to 150 years in federal prison, where he died in 2023.
Social Security was a favorite target of the early Tea Party movement. Tea Party radicals regularly slapped the Ponzi label on the retirement fund account.
Created in 1935, Social Security is, in truth, a financial lifeline for millions of retirement-age Americans, and for millions of disabled Americans. For many people, it’s their single largest source of income, post-retirement. For some, it’s their only source of income. Social Security pays the bills. Without it, the U.S. economy would collapse, post-haste. Millions would be destitute.
Financed jointly by workers and employers, Social Security is a big, big thing. Social Security Administration (SSA) income for 2023 totaled $1.351 trillion. Some 86% of Americans 65 and older receive benefits.
Musk told Rogan, “People pay into Social Security, and the money goes out of Social Security immediately….” That is exactly right. From the very start, it was designed so that the current generation of workers paid for the benefits promised the retirees of previous generations.
Musk talks as if this were somehow underhanded. Likewise, his repeated assertions – ridiculous on its face – that some 15 million Americans who, by every measure of common sense, are long gone are still getting checks.
In fact, there are just a handful of beneficiaries exceeding 100 years of age in the Social Security system.
Musk’s naked distortion of the truth was echoed recently by President Trump in remarks to Congress and before a national television audience. Together, Musk and Trump are pushing the narrative that Social Security is drowning in fraud and is awash in waste.
Musk has called Social Security recipients members of “the Parasite class.” That’s rich coming from a guy who feasts on government handouts.
Then there’s DOGE – shorthand for Department of Government Efficiency. Musk’s non-government team of governmental semi-illiterates has recently been dropping in on Social Security headquarters in suburban Washington, D.C., with plans to pare the staff by 7,000 workers, close neighborhood Social Security offices, and eliminate certain of the agency’s telephone conversations with the American people.
Ominously, DOGE has demanded access to sensitive taxpayer data stored in computerized systems sealed off to everyone but for a select few highly-trained individuals, according to Tiffany Flick, a former Social Security chief of staff who resigned last month following 30 years of service.
Flick said in a recent lawsuit that various actions by DOGE “have me seriously concerned that SSA programs will continue to function and operate without disruption.” Flick had uttered the worrisome possibility that benefits may be delayed or missed entirely. “The stakes are high,” she said, adding that the “chaotic environment” created by DOGE carries significant “risk of [Social Security] data leaking into the wrong hands.”
Martin O’Malley, a former SSA chief, recently declared, “It certainly appears that [Musk and Trump are] trying to break the capacity of the agency to serve its customers…. They’re trying to dismantle the agency, liquidate its assets, [and] sell pieces of it to their billionaire friends.”
Economist Kimberly Clausing took a broader view, telling podcaster Ezra Klein this week, “If you cut core government functions, that makes a lot of people worry. They worry about: Well, what if I don’t get my Social Security check because that’s missing. Or what if the reimbursement to my hospital doesn’t come through.
“Those kinds of things … can really drive up fear and reduce confidence…. Do you trust that institutions will work? Do you think the rule of law is reliable?”
Richard Robbins lives in Uniontown. He can be reached at dick.l.robbins@gmail.com.