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Ignorant Musk calls Social Security a 'Ponzi scheme.' He's coming for your money. | Opinion [1]
['Rex Huppke']
Date: 2025-03-03
Ignorant Musk calls Social Security a 'Ponzi scheme.' He's coming for your money. | Opinion Social Security is one of the country's most popular and successful federal programs, and its pay-as-you-go arrangement is not a deceptive scam – it's how the system was built to work.
Show Caption Hide Caption Millions of dead people aren't getting Social Security benefits Trump and Musk say the Social Security Administration fraudulently pays people listed as 100 years or older who've been dead for years, but this claim isn't true. Scripps News
When unelected President Elon Musk isn’t busy firing federal workers and wildly overstating how much money he’s saving the government, the billionaire is finding time to falsely claim Social Security is a “Ponzi scheme.”
Why would he say that about a beloved program more than 70 million older Americans rely on as a major source of income?
Probably because he’s too rich to have an inkling of an idea how vital Social Security is to regular Americans and resents the idea of wealthy people like himself having to pay into a government program that helps the non-billionaire class. Musk is nothing if not myopic.
Former Social Security head Martin O'Malley: You're going to see 'an interruption of benefits'
But make no mistake where this is all heading. The Department of Government Efficiency created by President Donald Trump and allegedly led by Musk has already pushed the Social Security Administration to announce a plan to cut more than 12% of its staff – roughly 7,000 people.
That prompted former Social Security Administration Commissioner Martin O’Malley to warn on CNBC that “people should start saving now” and: “Ultimately, you’re going to see the system collapse and an interruption of benefits. I believe you will see that within the next 30 to 90 days.”
Opinion: Musk, Trump and Bezos have led me to reconsider my stance on eating the rich
Rich Couture, a spokesperson for the American Federation of Government Employees’ Social Security General Committee, told CNN: “We’re at a 50-year staffing low, and we’re serving the highest number of beneficiaries we’ve ever had in the history of this agency. All of this will adversely undermine the ability of SSA to fulfill its responsibilities to the American people for the provision of Social Security benefits.”
Elon Musk shows he knows nothing about Social Security
You know who doesn’t care? The absurd rich guy who went on Joe Rogan’s bro-centric podcast the other day and said: “Social Security is the biggest Ponzi scheme of all time.”
Counterpoint: No it’s not, and that’s the kind of thing a person who incorrectly thinks he knows what he’s talking about says in an effort to sound smart and edgy.
Social Security is one of the country’s most popular and successful federal programs, and its pay-as-you-go arrangement is not a deceptive scam – it’s how the system was built to work.
Richard Fiesta, executive director of the Alliance for Retired Americans, wrote in a statement regarding Musk’s comment: “Social Security is a social insurance program. Workers and employers pay in, money goes to the Social Security Trust Fund and is paid out when due. Social Security has a Board of Trustees and professional actuaries who report annually on the health of the Trust Fund. It’s solvent and the benefits are guaranteed (unlike the stock market or a private equity fund). In 89 years, Social Security has never missed a payment.”
DOGE is wildly overblowing the amount of savings it's racking up
Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., posted on social media that “Social Security keeps 18 million seniors out of poverty every year. Trump and Musk are lying about it for one reason: so they can cut, privatize & dismantle it.”
There’s no reason to doubt that at this point. Musk’s sloppy axing of federal workers and contracts has demonstrated little concern or understanding of government work and how it might actually benefit Americans who don’t have the money to build rocket ships.
Opinion: DOGE should consider cutting Elon Musk's government handouts. Talk about waste.
A New York Times report shows the multitude of errors and overstatements Musk’s DOGE team has been making as it presents its “savings”: “When DOGE first published its list of canceled contracts, there were about 1,100 examples. The five largest were wrong.
"In one case, DOGE listed a contract worth $8 million as actually being worth $8 billion. In another, it mistakenly counted the same $655 million contract three times.”
Super.
'The biggest scheme of all time' is what Musk is doing
If you rely on Social Security, you don’t want people who can’t count mucking around with the Social Security Administration, particularly if they’re led by a guy who wrongly thinks the whole thing is a scam.
Lee Saunders, president of the American Federation of State, County & Municipal Employees, wrote in response to Musk’s “Ponzi scheme” nonsense: “The biggest scheme of all time is Elon Musk’s hostile takeover of the American government, a takeover in which the richest man in the world is somehow allowed to make decisions on a whim that hurt working people and seniors all to fund tax breaks for himself and his fellow billionaires. Their only goal is to rob working people of the Social Security benefits we have earned, so they can make themselves even richer.”
Case in point, The Washington Post recently reported this: “The Federal Aviation Administration is close to canceling a $2.4 billion contract to overhaul a communications system that serves as the backbone of the nation’s air traffic control system and awarding the work to Elon Musk’s Starlink, according to two people briefed on the plans.”
Gee, I wonder what would lead a government agency to pass a multibillion contract along to Elon Musk?
Musk sees dead people where there are none
The DOGE ditherer himself demonstrated his Social Security ignorance recently by posting on social media: “Having tens of millions of people marked in Social Security as ‘ALIVE’ when they are definitely dead is a HUGE problem.”
Yes, that would be a huge problem if it wasn’t fiction. First off, according to the Social Security Administration, about 73 million Americans receive Social Security payments. So if Musk’s “tens of millions” of dead people claim were true, that would mean a huge swath of all payments are going to deceased folks.
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In reality, an inspector general report for last year found that less than 1% of Social Security payments were improper, and most of those involved overpayments to living people.
Musk makes a big to-do about looking for government “waste and fraud.” But make no mistake, he’s the fraud. And he sees you, the Americans who need and are owed Social Security, as the waste.
Don’t say you weren’t warned.
Follow USA TODAY columnist Rex Huppke on Bluesky at @rexhuppke.bsky.social and on Facebook at facebook.com/RexIsAJerk
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[1] Url:
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