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?”
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.
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.
Yes, this. Who elected this asshole to anything?
A more interesting question is how do we fire him?
It’s a flaw in the system that must be corrected.
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! 😂
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.
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
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.
QUITE THE TIME TO DOUBLE DOWN ON THE HEARTLESS CEO BIT…
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.
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.
The mob will bring back the British tradition of draw and quarter for this shit head.
Scaphism is older and more richly deserved.
Musk, the new generation of robber baron
Quick, someone order a bunch of guillotines from France before Trump’s tariffs hit!
Nope sorry, we need them here.
