Summary

Elon Musk suggested cutting Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid in a Fox News interview, citing debunked claims about fraud and linking benefits to illegal immigration.

He falsely claimed millions of deceased individuals remain in the Social Security system, a statement previously refuted by officials.

While Trump has promised not to cut entitlement programs, Musk’s remarks indicate they are under threat, potentially impacting millions of Americans.

His rhetoric echoes far-right conspiracy theories, raising concerns about his influence on policy discussions regarding social safety nets.

  • @SabinStargem@lemmings.world
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    786 days ago

    We should use the chopping block on him, and repurpose his wealth to fund government programs. Especially for repaying federal employees for this shitshow.

  • @Jimius@lemmy.ml
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    856 days ago

    Reminder: you paid taxes in order to receive social security when you need it. If they negate on that deal, ask for your taxes back.

    • Brumefey
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      76 days ago

      ask for your taxes back.

      Sorry Elon fired all the help desk.

    • @dx1@lemmy.world
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      6 days ago

      Social Security’s “trust fund” is an empty pit of debt obligations. Benefits to current recipients are paid with incoming payroll taxes. Any difference is made up with additional taxes or monetary inflation, by way of Treasury bonds. They “reinvest it in the economy” if there’s ever a surplus, e.g., through military contractors. It finances the national debt.

      Putting aside the quirks of that setup, the basic function is that the taxes you pay in now are not an investment in your own future, you’re basically just paying for the retirement of older people now. The expectation is that someone down the road will then pay taxes to finance your retirement. Hence, how SS was able to start paying benefits almost immediately (3 years) after payroll taxes started being collected.

      • @Jimius@lemmy.ml
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        35 days ago

        That’s all technically correct. That’s how it works in a lot countries, Europe included. But that’s not how it feels, or what people think is going on. They’re paying into a system that is going to benefit them. Even if what they receive is derived from future taxes on other people. They contributed to the system, therefore they are also entitled to benefit from it.

        • @dx1@lemmy.world
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          4 days ago

          Well, their interpretation is at odds with reality, and they should reconcile that. Regardless of what they told or what they believed, they paid into a system where they were forced to subsidize current recipients, while the system itself could be revoked at any point, leaving them high and dry, and not running into 14th Amendment issues or anything like that. See Flemming v. Nestor, 1960 - quoting Wiki:

          Flemming v. Nestor, 363 U.S. 603 (1960), was a United States Supreme Court case in which the Court upheld the constitutionality of Section 1104 of the 1935 Social Security Act. In this Section, Congress reserved to itself the power to amend and revise the schedule of benefits. The Court rejected that Social Security is a system of ‘accrued property rights’ and held that those who pay into the system have no contractual right to receive what they have paid into it.[1]

          Note that I’m not saying anything “should” be one way or another, besides that people should be fully aware how the current system works in law.

    • @andrewta@lemmy.world
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      66 days ago

      I know you’re joking but for those that don’t understand:

      When you pay in your Social Security each paycheck. That money is immediately handed out to another person. When you go to collect Social Security in reality, you’re justliving on somebody else’s money. You never see your money again. It really is just social welfare.

    • @52fighters@lemmy.sdf.org
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      76 days ago

      (not so) fun fact: The average black male American never sees a penny from social security because the program is biased toward those who live long enough to reap the benefits of the program. So, despite paying in an entire working life, dying too young rewards you with a big fat nothing.

      • @theshoeshiner@lemmy.world
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        276 days ago

        The average life expectancy of a black male in the US is 72 years. Are you saying they’re just choosing not to pull SS? Something doesn’t seem right with your stat.

      • @gamer@lemm.ee
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        96 days ago

        What the fuck have you been smoking? Do you seriously believe that the average black male American will die before retirement age?

  • WrenM
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    356 days ago

    Seriously…. Why the fuck is this clown allowed to cut ANYTHING?

    The moment he cuts a single service someone depends on, he should be sued into submission. How is this happening?

    • @tal@lemmy.today
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      6 days ago

      Because the President and the Republican majority in the House and Senate are onboard with it, and that’s the authority driving it (mostly the President, but the reason that Congress isn’t objecting to or trying to block stuff is because they’re okay with it). Musk may be the face of the cuts — he doesn’t have to worry about re-election, unlike politicians — he has no authority of his own. His organization is just saying “this is what we should cut”, and the cuts happen under the President’s authority. Musk isn’t independently going out and cutting things.

      • @GeeDubHayduke@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        86 days ago

        Musk isn’t independently going out and cutting things.

        It’s weird seeing this complete and utter bullshit being unironically spewed still. It wasn’t Trump that cut the air traffic controllers, or nuclear watchdogs, or infections disease investigators. It was Musk, and spreading this propaganda just helps protect Trump from allowing it.

  • @Kit@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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    446 days ago

    I sincerely hope these cuts do not happen, but if they do, I hope we see a massive “grey wave” of large scale protests from older folks who rely on these programs. They worked and paid into Social Security their whole lives and deserve that money.

    • @conditional_soup@lemm.ee
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      6 days ago

      The thing is, the elders have all bought in to this idea that there’s no money for social security and medicare not because it’s been whittled away and underfunded and means tested to death for forty years, but rather there’s just massive, massive fraud, and everybody’s stealing from social security before it gets to them. So, they’re probably all cheering this push to cut entitlements because they think that all these fraudsters will be kicked off, and surely they won’t be kicked off, surely their social security benefits will actually be a good amount once all those mooches are kicked off. When it does happen to them, and it will, they won’t realize that it was by design, they’ll all be stunned that Trump and Musk made this “mistake” and swept them up in the cuts.

      • @jaybone@lemmy.world
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        136 days ago

        And if we have elections again, they’ll thumb a ride from outside of their tent by the highway to catch a ride to the polling booths where they will vote for Trump’s third term? I’m thinking some of them will have to figure it out by then.

        • @conditional_soup@lemm.ee
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          6 days ago

          Imma be straight with you, dawg, my MAGA mom is still unironically, dead seriously convinced that Obama is the anti-Christ and he’s going to come back and seize control of the government and launch a nuclear apocalypse literally any moment now.

          • @tal@lemmy.today
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            36 days ago

            https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2011/11/white-house-shooter-and-obama-the-antichrist-were-other-presidents-called-the-antichrist.html

            How Many Presidents Have Been Accused of Being the Antichrist?

            Hint: It’s not just Obama.

            Suspected White House shooter Oscar Ramiro Ortega-Hernandez was obsessed with President Barack Obama, according to investigators, and reportedly thought Obama was the Antichrist. In September, heckler David Serrano called Obama “the Antichrist” at a fundraiser. Have other U.S. presidents been suspected of being the Antichrist?

            Yes. Perhaps the first U.S. president suspected of being the Antichrist was Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Roosevelt’s extraordinary influence and desire to form a worldwide United Nations raised the suspicions of many conservative Christians. When President Roosevelt began to engage in diplomacy with the Soviet Union, prominent evangelist and politician Gerald Burton Winrod suggested that Roosevelt was at the very least under the influence of the Antichrist, and carrying out his plans. During John F. Kennedy’s candidacy for president, Protestant leaders compared electing Kennedy, a Catholic, to electing the Antichrist. In 1990 a man named Gregory Stuart Gordon invaded the house of former president Ronald Reagan, telling Secret Service agents “Ronald Reagan is the Antichrist. He must be killed and I must kill him.” While Gordon’s attorney claimed that Gordon was only trying to attract attention in hopes of gaining treatment for a drug problem, courts judged that his threat was serious and sentenced him to a two-year prison term.

    • I already told my Trump-voting mom that if there’s anyone that deserves to lose it, it’s her. She doesn’t care. Trumpers are irrevocably anti-human even if they get hurt in the process. Fuck the future, fuck everyone but them, and fuck them too as long as everyone else is getting fucked harder.

  • @My_IFAKs___gone@lemmy.world
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    386 days ago

    No way, a horrible person admits they probably might do something horrible after establishing a strong track record of doing horrible things?! I am SHOCKED. Who could have seen this horrible administration known for doing horrible things doing something horrible like this?

  • @futatorius@lemm.ee
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    316 days ago

    While Trump has promised not to cut entitlement programs

    And we all know how much Trump’s word is worth.

  • @CharlesDarwin@lemmy.world
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    236 days ago

    “Admits”.

    Haven’t demons like Paul Ryan had their entire political career motivated by ending Social Security? It’s not like the Republicans’ desire to kill old people is any secret…

    • @TimeTraveler@lemmy.world
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      146 days ago

      You work until you die

      Either the work kills you (no OSHA) or You work until you die from old age

      There will be no retirement for the poors

  • TrackinDaKraken
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    266 days ago

    So, do I get back everything I paid into it for the past 40 years? Is that part of the plan? If not, who gets that money, let me guess.

    • AFK BRB Chocolate
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      106 days ago

      I just retired after 40 years at over company, plus some college jobs. I’m 62, and social security was one of the things in my plan that made me decide I could retire My company was laying people off; I was secure, but my leaving allowed one more person to keep their job.

      Now Trump is tanking my 401k and Elon is taking about cutting SS. I’ve never been more stressed about money.

      • @in4aPenny@lemmy.world
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        26 days ago

        Welcome to the financial life of a millennial who are experts at living in poverty thanks to the economy boomers like you benefited from. I wish we had an economy where a milkman salary could pay for a house and family like it was when you were growing up.

        • AFK BRB Chocolate
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          16 days ago

          Me too! I’ve voted consistently liberal, including for every minimum wage hike on the ballot. Also, I’m on the very trailing edge of the boomer generation, and much of the era you’re talking about was before my time. I did reasonably well because I was a computer science grad when that was an earlier thing, but still, I had it easier than my kids (who we’ve tried to help a much a we can).

    • @MelodiousFunk@slrpnk.net
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      276 days ago

      My mom when the CoL bump to her SSDI survivors benefit bumped her over the poverty line and out of Medicaid eligibility:

      “Because I got an extra $50 a month, I now have to pay $100 a month for insurance, plus copays! This is ridiculous!”

      My mom when I pointed out that those thresholds haven’t been touched in decades because that would be helping people and helping people is bad:

      “Well, I guess I can’t really complain, I’ve been treated well.”

      Do not underestimate the vast amounts of copium reserves harbored by the brainwashed.

  • sp3ctr4l
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    196 days ago

    Musk’s head is gonna be on the chopping block if he manages to make 20+ million Americans instantly homeless.

    • @in4aPenny@lemmy.world
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      16 days ago

      You’d think, Americans are more likely to turn on eachother in an attempt to feed themselves. Look how much billionaires have been screwing them for decades and they’d rather cry about culture war issues and get distracted by drones over NJ. Everything’s getting worse but “haha Jon Stewart made funny voices and pulled funny faces he should be president!” There would be organized mass suicides before an #OccupyBillionaires movement, wouldn’t be the first time either. Americans are literally hopeless.