Summary
Elon Musk amplified Senator Mike Lee’s calls to overhaul Social Security, labeling it a “nightmare.”
Lee, known for advocating the elimination of Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid, criticized the program as deceptive and mismanaged.
Musk, co-chair of Trump’s advisory commission on cutting federal spending, faces accusations of aligning with GOP efforts to privatize or gut Social Security.
Advocacy groups denounce these moves as a threat to seniors and disabled Americans, warning that Republicans aim to shift earned benefits to Wall Street, despite broad public opposition to cuts or privatization.
Can we normalize saying “world’s greediest man” instead of “world’s richest man?”
yes
Worlds most successful thief
Id settle for worlds greediest thief
Let’s normalize the richest being the greediest.
I think I know what you were trying to say, but the richest are the greediest. That’s always been true…
It flabbergasts me that Musk, an unelected billionaire, has any input at all in policy decisions.
Just another day in the post-truth age. This and much more awaits in a society that allows a handful of algorithms unfettered editorial control over what people think.
It’s just another day in the plutocracy that has probably run things the entire lifetime of “democracy”.
The only difference is with MAGA the plutocracy no longer need to hide behind lobbyists, campaign financing, super PAC’s, nepotism/cronyism, quid pro quo, virtue signaling about national security, etc to engage in corruption, loot the public coffers, and divert trillions to their own companies or cronies in the MIC or whatever.
The conservative propaganda machine has now successfully groomed and cultivated a mentally ill cult, who will let their king insert a microchip into their brains without a second thought… Hell, they’ll probably hand over their life savings for the privilege.
Trump’s just doing it in the open. Every president has had unelected advisors.
Not all advisors were so nakedly operating in their own self-interest.
Plenty of unelected people have a massive say in policy. We wouldn’t get anything done if every bureaucrat had to be elected.
This specific unelected soon-to-be bureaucrat is fucking towel though.
This specific unelected soon-to-be bureaucrat is fucking towel though.
Hey now, that’s not very fair, towels are at least useful and pretty good at wiping up shit. Phony Stark only ever makes messes and then wallows in the shit.
Yeah, but Musk doesn’t even have any related talent or work experience. He’s just a rich greedy POS.
Don’t besmirch something so useful as a towel.
Sure he is unelected, but he paid Trump 75 billion
Doesn’t that entitle him to bankrupt your parents. They can move in with you.
N’est pas?
/s
75 million. It’s surprisingly cheap to buy Trump.
Vrai, c’est domage.
It’s a flaw in the system that must be corrected.
Yes, this. Who elected this asshole to anything?
A more interesting question is how do we fire him?
So, they plan on stealing the money I’ve put into it over my 25 year working career?
I know that’s not exactly how it works, but yeah it feels like it’s theft with extra steps if I never see benefits but had paid into it.
Hate to break it to you but that’s not how social security works. The money you pay in now is used to pay for the benefits of the currently retired. It is not an investment fund that you are paying into with a guarantee of payments when you retire.
It is not an investment fund…with a guarantee of payments when you retire.
The three stool legs of American retirement. 401k, pensions, Social fucking security. There IS an expectation and that is you paying into it with that expectation.
But if the government can fuck you then you have no right to expect better! /s
401 LOL
pensions fucking ROFL
ss… yea, WAS an expectation. the 1% want all that money for themselves, and guess what, they’ll fucking get it
They did exist, and still do in lesser ways. You SHOULD be angry about it. Stop rolling over.
Bruh whats the point? Have you ever changed anything?
Nothing is going to change until billionaires and fascists are scared to walk the streets. Admittedly we had one person that succeeded in actually making the world a better place, one who died trying, and im pretty sure the other guy got arrested. He’s not rolling over, he’s a realist.
The older generation fucked us and continues to fuck us. They literally will not stop until they all die. I know theres some good people in there, but one bad apple spoils the bunch. And the bunch is well over half spoiled. If they wanted ss, they shouldve made the world a more livable place where people would want to have kids and thereby stabilize ss. They chose to maximize their profits at the expense of THE ENTIRE FUCKING PLANET.
No sympathy, fuck them all. Fuck the red sea I live in too. Someone should glass us.
For as much as you seem to be opposed to being fucked over by your attitude, you sure seem to be bending over with your words
Doesn’t matter if it “works that way” if literally everyone thinks of it that way and isn’t currently storming the capitol because of that understanding.
Ah yes, lets just ignore reality. The same people who want to benefit from ss are the people who fucked it by making it impossible for the younger generation to grow their wealth, or want to even bring a younger generation into the world.
Yeah, they should be storming the capitol for that and many other reasons. But that is how it works, and they wont. Amaricans are too pussy to actually evoke change, outside of three people so far. And despite the fact that two of them were right wing nutjobs, they still attempted to do better for the world than 99.999% of the rest of the country.
No idea what half of this is referring to. You seem to have misunderstood me
yeah more than likely they will use that as the impetus and try to do like bush junior changing it into a kind of 401k
Any billionaire should be open to a robin hood law, if you’re going to violate the social contract so much that it’s obliterated and you’re no longer subject to law or criminal charges then you should also be exempt from its protections.
Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition, to wit: There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect.
-Frank Wilhoit
I had to look up who this was and found this. Thought it was interesting.
Do your cut-and-paste fingers ever get tired?
Sounds like someone’s jimmies got rustled.
It would be a shame if everybody started believing that it’s good to eat the rich
Establish a new national past time of stealing from billionaires to try to hit the high score, it would certainly be more exciting than baseball.
They certainly should not get to dictate anything about us. This jagoff does not even pay into it, so he can fuck RIGHT OFF.
Good job, assholes. You were worried about egg prices and obsessed with trans. And now this.
Modern problems require modern solutions. I’m not advocating anything but I’ll leave this here in case anyone has not seen it yet.
https://www.cnn.com/2024/12/04/us/brian-thompson-united-healthcare-death/index.html
Man, I don’t advocate violence (except when necessary), but I’m struggling to feel bad about this. I’ve had almost all major and many minor health insurance providers and UHC was above and beyond the worst, hands down, full stop. Just garbage.
Same. I’ve been saying for a while that I’m surprised this kind of thing doesn’t happen more often. All it takes is one person deciding that their problems are a specific company’s fault. One can imagine all sorts of reasons for that conclusion to be drawn. Tons of shootings happen for way more trivial reasons too.
Why struggle? Just don’t feel bad. You don’t owe them anything. Hell, advocate for this becoming a national holiday. “The day someone actually did something impactful”
I just saw a headline pushed at me while walking around and it was effectively that most Americans don’t feel that bad about the guy…
As you’re the expert: does this CEO’s death qualify him for a Darwin award?
Ha. No idea on that specifically, but I do remember a podcast YEARS ago bringing up the awareness that some of America’s oligarchs had when it came to being concerned about uprisings involving guillotines and the like…this batch seems to have zero concerns.
I’m so happy that these fuckers will be looking behind their back constantly now. They know what they did to us, they know that their greed has a death toll.
Is it too much to wish that he dies during his next plastic surgery operation?
Apparently corporate assassinations are now on the table, UHC CEO was just murdered on the street with a silencer.
cyberpunk is not an instruction manual
aaaaa
Wake up! Samurai, we have a city to burn.
~Music plays~
Go out and be the change you wanna see! 😂
QUITE THE TIME TO DOUBLE DOWN ON THE HEARTLESS CEO BIT…
I’ll never understand why billionaires hate OASDI…
The cap means no one pays more than 10.5k this year. That isn’t even fucking pocket change to Musk or any billionaire.
their love of money overtakes their humanity. they lack empathy.
They never had any. They also never had any value to the Human race.
The most powerful people in the US acquired their power from privatizing Social Security in the form of retirement accounts.
The largest retirement account management companies are Vanguard, Blackrock, and State Street. They consolidate all of the power of the shares from all of the retirement accounts they manage, to give them board control of 89% of the S&P 500.
Those faceless firms are actually the ones who control the hardship index (price of food, housing, clothing, other essentials) that earned Trump so many “bad economy” votes.
The Misery index is about to go nuts
People like him have all the money they could ever need. This is about control, and punishing people they don’t like (and those that don’t fall in line and lick the boot).
Every dollar the working class has is a dollar they don’t have to sell their labor to get.
They think the free market solves all problems. Anything the government does is bad and evil by definition.
Agreed. They are basically paying nothing into it.
They want us to pay into some privatized thing where they can take their fees and commissions.
One of the first thoughts I had with the election result was “welp, there goes my retirement”. None of this surprises me even a little
Musk, enemy to mankind, has declared war on everyone.
Go ahead, steal my hard earned contributions skum. Let’s see how many desperate people you can piss off, we might actually see some real change.
Well, seeing as SSDI is my only source of income, guess I’ll die homeless if that gets cut off.
Cool!
Being homeless is also not an option in conservative hell. You’ll need to report to your local jail, er slave cen, er employment center!
So anyway, anyone in a more sane country wanna do a sham marriage?
35 / M / Former DB Admin, Software Engineer
Been told I have a lovely singing voice.
Doesn’t have to be a sham, nothing sexier than someone who gets banned from World on this happy day. ;)
ASL, lol?
I am mostly not kidding.
Though I am in good spirits, I spent most of 2023 and a bit of 2024 homeless… got held hostage and assaulted for a week in my own apartment, was severely injured, lost my job, couldn’t pay rent, got evicted, lost everything I’d ever owned, family and ‘friends’ either didn’t care or said I was crazy and none of that happened.
My life objectively sucks, if my SSDI gets cut to nothing, I will likely literally die horribly.
If anybody needs a stay at home tech dork, who can maybe hopefully someday do enough of my own self directed physical therapy (lol can’t afford actual PT), may also be useful as a light handyman…
I also have a steam library I can family share… I dunno.
30s/FtM/Minnesota
I am mostly kidding though, unfortunately. I do have an easy path to EU citizenship open to me, but actually moving is expensive and I work retail. I’m absolutely open to the idea that, at my age, standards are low enough and I might just click with someone and know that I want to spend the foreseeable future with them, but I’m not actually looking to defraud anyone, lol.
Musk, the new generation of robber baron
Conservatives have been wanting and trying to dismantle the SS since its inception.
I’m not that concerned just yet. There’s a reason it’s called the third rail of politics.
If I had to bet on the future outcome, they’ll raise the contribution cap to around $300k, maybe cut benefits a bit, fixing the solvency problem for at least a generation or two.
I’d also bet on an immigration deal in a future administration. Getting more workers/contributors into the system.
It honestly wouldn’t shock me if the Trump admin pivoted to amnesty just like Reagan. He’s a lame duck from day one. He’s not beholden to anything from the campaign trail. If he’s gotta choose the adoration of his voter base vs the donor base, he’ll choose the wealthy. He hates being excluded from the elites. You can’t buy class. But you can be invited to their parties, their clubs, their scene. His working class base has nothing left to offer him.
What I don’t get is why there is a cutoff such that the “contribution” that jerkoffs like Musk put in is basically negligible.
If anyone should pay and pay and pay some more, it’s people like Musk. I like Bernie’s idea of 100% tax above 999 million. Being a billionaire should not even be a thing.
