The first step to getting rid of Social Security or completely remaking it is to get Americans to mistrust a widely popular system. Elon Musk is trying to do just that.
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When Republicans come for Social Security, and they eventually will, they are not going to announce, “Hey, Americans, you know all of those tax cuts for the wealthy that we want to enact? Well, since they won’t pay for themselves, we are going to take away this beloved system that provides you with a financial safety net after you retire.”
Instead, they will need to find some reason to either kill it or drastically remake it.
Like “fraud.”
Perhaps that is one of the reasons why Elon Musk called Social Security “the biggest Ponzi scheme of all time” on Friday.
Of course, in the case of the head of DOGE, it is also possible that he simply has no clue what he is doing. Last month, for example, he claimed that many 150-year-olds still receive benefits.
“So, you know, there’s crazy things like just cursory examination of Social Security, and we’ve got people in there that are 150 years old now,” Musk said during an Oval Office press conference. “Do you know anyone who’s 150? I don’t.”
However, his “logic” doesn’t make sense.
As Wired first reported, the benefits system of the Social Security Administration (SSA) was written using an old programming language called COBOL. Experts familiar with COBOL pointed out that it often uses a date from 1875, i.e., 150 years ago, as a reference point.
Of course, accuracy has never been Musk’s strong suit.
But that also doesn’t matter since he and other Republicans can just loudly repeat a lie and people will believe it… for example that Social Security is a Ponzi scheme.
That doesn’t mean that the system is perfect or that it shouldn’t be scrutinized, especially because of its immense size. Social Security pays out $1.6 trillion annually to 69 million beneficiaries.
But that scrutiny is already happening. For example, last year, the SSA’s internal watchdog identified more than $1 billion in improper payments. That’s not good, but it is also a far cry from the rampant fraud Musk and others are alleging.
However, that isn’t stopping top Republicans from repeating his claims, and from wanting him and his tech bros to sift through the Social Security system and the data of tens of millions of Americans.
Asked whether Social Security was on the chopping block, House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) denied that this was the case, but, in the same breath, stated that he “met with Elon about this multiple times” and looked at the system.
“What he’s finding with his algorithms, crawling through the data of the Social Security system, is enormous amounts of fraud, waste, and abuse,” Johnson said on “Meet the Press” on Sunday. “What I am saying is we have a moral responsibility to ensure that those programs are conducted in a way that does not allow for this massive fraud and abuse. And that’s what he is finding.”
So, what about the investigations of actual experts?
“Don’t believe it,” Johnson said when asked about the SSA inspector general’s report. “Hey! Don’t believe it.”
And that’s really been the GOP’s modus operandi for some time: Don’t believe the experts, believe us. Believe the guy who thinks that a bunch of 150-year-olds are getting Social Security benefits.
Just don’t ask for evidence… and don’t mind him sifting through your personal information.
In his Navigating the Insanity columns, Klaus Marre provides the kind of hard-hitting, thought-provoking, and often humorous analysis you won’t find anywhere else.
