SOCIAL SECURITY THREATENED
And you know by who...
The Social Security Act was signed into law by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1935. Our 32nd president called it a social insurance plan – paid for by employers and employees - that would safeguard America’s elderly against what he called “the hazards and vicissitudes of life.”
Since its inception, it has done just that. 454 million Social Security numbers have been issued over the years.Today, Social Security keeps two-thirds of America’s elderly, disadvantaged and disabled population out of poverty. It enables people to eat, to pay their bills, and live lives with a minimum of dignity as they age. For over eighty years, Social Security has never failed to meet its payday.
All that, however, is now in question. Why? Because Elon Musk and his gang of merry techies have been in the Social Security system since February.
Musk is an unelected, unvetted, and unscrupulous wannabe dictator, now pointing his notorious chainsaw at one of America’s most cherished institutions. Why? Because he wants to. Because he has a visceral distaste for anything that hints of government helping people – except him of course. Since 2008, Musk himself has received $38 billion dollars in government contracts. With those contracts, he earns from our government somewhere around $8 million dollars a day, while the average senior on social security makes $65 a day.
Being the world’s richest man, Musk presumably can’t imagine worrying about how he’ll support himself in his old age. He’s not old enough to have even a hint of what a means when your body begins to break down, or your usefulness to the economy diminishes. He doesn’t have a clue at this point in his life what it means to worry about the rent, or where your next meal will come from. His giddy rampage through government agencies – from those that protect our parklands, our consumers, our waterways, our medical research, our air safety, our hungry, even our nation’s money - displays an almost sadistic callousness towards the everyday lived experiences of other human beings. Musk has even reposted a meme calling Americans who use federal programs the 'Parasite Class.”
Taking aim at Social Security is nothing short of cruel to the millions of Americans who paid into that system, and quite simply, need it in order to live.
Yet that is exactly what Elon did last Friday on the Joe Rogan show, smearing Social Security in front of an audience of millions. He then made sure that another 220 million of his forced followers saw his diatribe on twitter.
What is his gripe with Social Security? He says it’s the “biggest ponzi scheme of all time.” He is using his enormous platform to cast aspersions on the program, even doubling down on debunked claims such as there being 20 million dead people marked as alive, even receiving Social Security benefits!
That is always their plan, see. First you deride something (or someone), getting enough people to agree with you that you gain their permission to mess with it. Musk at this point is a danger, not only to the effective functioning of our government, but to the spiritual fabric of a country in which our care for one another is the ultimate glue that holds this society together.
Why is he doing all this? Well, many suspect that he and the rest of his techno billionaire authoritarian boy gang essentially want to destroy the functioning of our government – so they can privatize, privatize, privatize. Their plan isn’t efficiency for anyone – except possibly themselves. It will be so much easier to take the whole thing over once it doesn’t work anymore anyway. All this is akin to a hostile takeover in business – a morally monstrous technique where a larger company takes over a smaller one and sells off its distressed parts.
Musk isn’t just cutting the out the fat; he’s cutting into the bone. He continues to wave his chainsaw at Social Security, telling employees at the Agency on Thursday that this there will be a massive reorganization involving “significant workforce reductions.”
Former Governor O’Malley of Maryland, director of Social Security under President Biden, now warns that the entire program could fall under the weight of Musk’s attacks on its basic infrastructure. I think about American seniors who at this very moment might be panicked, absolutely traumatized at the thought that their Social Security checks might stop coming.
The American people know better than to allow this. An overwhelming majority of us support Social Security, at a rate of around 85-90% across party lines and demographics. It is a bedrock of security for people who might otherwise face devastating conditions in their elderly years, and people know that. This is one of what I suspect will be many instances over the next few months where the American awaken to the brutal truth about Musk’s spurious “efficiency” plans – that he is not there to help people, nor is he improving the functioning of our government. He is there as part of a larger project, a coup against the American government and the destruction of our most treasured democratic ideals.
Most of us paid for this, it's not a gift, it's the only source of income for millions. If they would pay their taxes, there would be enough. Actually there is already enough. All the newly unemployed people cannot pay into it. It's ours to keep. The illusion that there isn't enough money is exactly that, an illusion. Maybe they can donate their billions to prevent the so called crisis. There has always been waste but we the people cannot have access to their "secret information". There's money for weapons.
I worked at a hospital for over 15 years and was fully vested in a pension when it went bankrupt and with it went my pension. A few years prior to the bankruptcy the hospital offered us a 401K option. It turns out that our contributions in that final year disappeared and no one went to jail! At 65 I just signed up for Medicare and was hoping to retire at 65. I was relying on Social Security to supplement my income.
As a Registered Nurse who practiced in patient's homes for many years I saw the absolute need for both Social Security and Medicare to give people over 65 the dignity they deserve. It is not a windfall, it is life sustaining, and barely keeps the elderly above the poverty line.
Shame on them!