"If you are silent about your pain, they'll kill you and say you enjoyed your pain" (Zora Neale Hurston)
Trump and Musk are wanting to privatize Social Security. Then they want to sell off everything in the building. They are hoping to get their greedy hands on the $1.7 trillion in the Social Security fund.
But that money is not the Federal Government's money. Of course it belongs to all people and employers who have paid into it their whole working life.
The richest man in the world has been put in charge of dismantling American programs that were created to prevent elderly poverty. Why should he care? He will never depend on it.
I am 71 and I need my Social Security to pay my bills. I still work 3 days a week. I didn’t save enough to retire at 62 or 66. I have read that what I have managed to save is about average for a big part of American workers. EVERYONE WHO READS THIS SHOULD LET EVERYONE THEY KNOW WHO IS DEPENDENT ON SOCIAL SECURITY THAT THEY NEED TO ACT NOW. ALSO TELL EVERYONE YOU KNOW WHO HAS PARENTS.
Why is Elon Musk trashing the SS (Social Security) phone system? He tried this last week and got shot down, but it’s so important to him that he’s doing it again. And at the same time, why is he closing hundreds of social security offices across the nation?
The answer is pretty simple.
Musk has continuously, without evidence, accused social security as a ‘ponzi scheme’ and ‘rife with fraud’.
It’s no secret that Republicans have been eyeing this ‘third rail’ for decades, without much success.
But now comes Musk with a double-whammy.
Once the social security phone system is removed, the ONLY recourse SS applicants and current recipients have is to make an appointment at their nearest Social Security office (currently at least a month wait) and come in to plead their case. All musk has to do is to begin denying new applications or wiping people off Social Security with a message, “we need to verify that you are a US citizen and properly identify yourself. Please bring in your SS card, a notarized birth certificate, Name change documentation for married women, and a real ID or passport so that your payments can start/resume”
The majority of SS recipients (new and existing) depend on social security and Medicare/medicaid to survive. A few months without these payments will wipe them out.
This is fucking evil, if this is really the plan. Please, show me that I’m wrong in the comments. I really don’t mind being schooled.
Paul Krugman is now posting stuff on a nearly daily basis on Substack, and well worth following:
The Clean Little Secret of Social Security -It’s a pretty good program, and we can afford it
Smears, Sadism and Social Security — Why Elon Musk wants to make seniors suffer
You’ve probably seen Musk claiming that Social Security is a Ponzi scheme and that millions of dead people are collecting benefits? Besides decimating the staff and closing offices at SSA,
The goal is, if you can’t kill Social Security, make it impossible for people to file claims or get help.
Under this plan, beneficiaries would still be able to call the SSA. But they would have to verify their identity either over the internet or through in-person visits to field offices.
Bear in mind that we’re talking about older and/or disabled Americans, many of whom are unable to access the internet and physically unable to visit SSA offices — which would in any case be overwhelmed by the increased traffic, given that the agency is already facing large staffing cuts. So this would be a move of almost cartoonish cruelty, and a nightmare for millions of Americans
Why would Musk do this? Krugman speculates:
My guess, instead, is that it’s an ego thing, that Social Security has become to Musk what Canada has become to Donald Trump. Both men at one point said something stupid, something that would have turned them into laughingstocks if there weren’t so much fear in the air. But both men have been unable to let go, doubling down in what amounts to an attempt to redeem their initial foolishness.
The Washington Post reports that employee cuts at the SSA have led to office managers at field offices being forced to answer phone calls at the front desk in place of fired receptionists. In addition, the agency’s website crashed four times in 10 days in March due to server overloads, preventing millions of retired people and the disabled from accessing their online accounts.