U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders warned late Monday that billionaire Elon Musk’s new call for up to $700 billion in cuts to mandatory federal spending is an alarming step in the direction of Social Security privatization, a longstanding—and deeply unpopular—goal of right-wing politicians and corporate-funded think tanks.

Musk, who is spearheading a large-scale assault on federal agencies and workers, told Fox Business host Larry Kudlow on Monday that “waste and fraud” in “entitlement spending”—a category that includes Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid—is “the big one to eliminate,” estimating that up to $700 billion could be cut from such programs.

  • IninewCrow@lemmy.ca
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    4 months ago

    Privatize Social Security? … that sounds like an oxymoron - ‘An oxymoron is a figure of speech that juxtaposes concepts with opposite meanings within a word or in a phrase that is a self-contradiction.’

    Think about it … let’s pay a private company a fee to support people who need some social assistance … basically, let’s pay a rich guy to pay some of their money we give them to give to the poor and allow the rich guy to monetize and profit from this system as much as possible. What the hell do you think is going to happen?

    The American model of using public tax resources … let’s pay rich people to distribute our taxes … let’s pay a middle man for no reason other than to profit to handle how public money should be spent

    • Pennomi@lemmy.world
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      4 months ago

      Privatized social security is pensions. What happened to pensions?

      googles Oh. Oh no.

  • pelespirit@sh.itjust.worksOPM
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    4 months ago

    I don’t normally do warnings like this, but once you lose a program like this, it’s hard to get it back.

  • gibmiser@lemmy.world
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    4 months ago

    Oh no, some ants are getting into the refrigerator! Let’s solve this problem!

    Republicans: WE MUST THROW AWAY THE REFRIGERATOR! NO REFRIGERATORS ALLOWED!

    • ALQ@lemmy.world
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      4 months ago

      No, keep the refrigerator, just throw out all the food. After all, real Muricans order in with their copious amounts of money!