How Elon Musk is using 'outright disinformation' to justify 'assault' on Social Security

18 March

It was 90 years ago, in 1935, that Social Security became one of the most important achievements of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt's New Deal. After FDR signed the Social Security Act of 1935 into law, the U.S. Social Security Administration (SSA) was set up to administer the program.

The SSA is among the many federal government agencies that the Trump Administration, with the help of the Elon Musk-led Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), is targeting for mass layoffs. Salon's Amanda Marcotte, in a scathing article published on March 18, warns that Musk is carrying out a full-fledged assault on Social Security.

"Musk loves to play word games when defending his assault on a program that helps keep millions of elderly and disabled people from falling into poverty," Marcotte explains. "He insists he's merely trying to attack 'waste and fraud' in the program, falsely claiming that $700 billion a year can be categorized this way. Reality-based assessments show that it's likely less than 1 percent of that figure for the entire federal government, not just Social Security. To justify this outright disinformation, Musk has insisted that 'millions of people' getting Social Security checks are 'definitely dead,' calling them 'vampires' and declaring 'tax dollars are being stolen.'"

Marcotte adds, "It's not true, and we can call this a lie, because Musk has repeatedly been told the retirees he calls 'definitely dead' are very much alive. He refuses to back down or admit he was wrong. Instead, he disparages Social Security altogether."

The Salon journalist notes specific comments that, she says, underscore Musk's contempt for Social Security. For example, Musk told podcast host Joe Rogan, "Social Security is the biggest Ponzi scheme of all time."

"Musk frames retired people in parasitical terms, not seeing them as those who have paid their dues and have earned their reward," Marcotte observes. "In light of that, when he speaks of 'waste' in Social Security, he's hinting at this broader view that retired people are inherently illegitimate. While he couches language like 'vampire' and 'fraud' in false claims that he's talking about illegal payments, the accumulated impact of his rhetoric is to demonize elderly people as a useless burden on society."

Marcotte continues, "When the end goal is 'efficiency,' it's easy to get to this view that retired people are an 'inefficiency' and 'redundancy' that should no longer be funded. The ugly attitude towards elderly people is an inevitable result of the profoundly anti-human views and ideology of Musk and his compatriots in the tech billionaire world."

According to Marcotte, Musk's disdain for Social Security fits in with a "deeply sociopathic" ideology in which "techno-fascists" view themselves as saviors of western civilization and see "empathy" as a weakness.

"In this case, the system is capitalism, which has taken on a near-religious status to Silicon Valley's billionaire elite," Marcotte warns. "It's an attitude that's inherently eugenicist, measuring people's value solely in terms of whether they can be utilized to make more money for the already-wealthy investor class. It's why Musk has no respect for federal workers whose labor is centered around helping people, not profits. And it's certainly not a worldview that has space for retirees — people who, by definition, are out of the paid labor market."

Marcotte adds, "Causing people who have earned their Social Security to lose benefits doesn't look like an unintended consequence of 'efficiency.' It's becoming clear that it is Musk's end goal.

Amanda Marcotte's full article for Salon is available at this link.

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