Lone Candle
Champion of Truth
Elon Musk makes basic attacks against Social Security that Republicans have been making for many decades, and Joe Rogan is impressed like these are new ideas. Elon’s attacks are wrong or misleading in multiple ways.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C12IdscHGNo
“Social Security is the biggest federal expense. The next priciest items are other entitlements including Medicare and Medicaid, and Americans want to spend more on them, too. Defense is next, and while there’s room for cutting there, it’s nowhere near enough to close the deficit and save Social Security.
Some politicians claim that we can grow our economy enough to make up for Social Security’s shortfalls. But that won’t work. “Because Social Security benefits are indexed to wage growth, as wages increase, so do benefits,” explains the Cato Institute’s Romina Boccia and Dominik Lett. “Therefore, while higher wage growth boosts revenues, it simultaneously raises the future benefits owed to retirees.”
Complicating the issue, add Boccia and Lett, is that “improvements in life expectancy and a declining birth rate mean that a shrinking group of workers is supporting an increasing number of retirees even if macroeconomic conditions are sound.”
…
Boccia also points out that retirees over the age of 65 have on average triple the net worth of workers between the ages of 35–44. It’s perverse to tax hard-working younger Americans for the benefit of wealthier older ones. She suggests that “Congress should means-test Social Security, returning to the program’s stated purpose of antipoverty protection in old age.”
Some more savings could be found by linking cost-of-living adjustments in Social Security benefits to the chained CPI, which is more accurate than other measures in reflecting how consumers respond to changing prices.”
https://reason.com/2025/03/03/doge-and-congress-should-look-hard-at-reforming-social-security/
“When Veronica Sanchez called a Social Security hotline Thursday, she waited two hours before her call was abruptly disconnected.
On Friday, she was on hold for six hours and still did not get through to anyone.
“I’m gonna have to take time out of my work to stand in line and hopefully get this resolved,” the 52-year-old medical practice manager in Canoga Park said Monday before calling one more time.
For Sanchez, the stakes are high: If she does not obtain a medical letter from the agency by April 15, her parents, who are on a fixed income, risk losing about $2,500 a month in medical care. They would no longer receive insulin medication for their diabetes, she said, and could lose their daily visit from a nurse.
But even if Sanchez shows up in person, she is not likely to speak to an agent. Field offices are no longer accepting walk-in appointments.
“The system, it’s broken down,” Sanchez said.
Elderly and disabled people — and those who care for them — are encountering a knot of bureaucratic hurdles and service disruptions after the Trump administration imposed a sweeping overhaul of the Social Security Administration system.”
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“In February, the agency that sends monthly checks to nearly 73 million Americans announced plans to slash 7,000 jobs and consolidate its regional offices from 10 to four as part of an effort to “reduce the size of its bloated workforce and organizational structure.” The cutbacks, enforced by Musk’s advisory team known as the Department of Government Efficiency, represent a 12% reduction of the agency’s workforce.
Sanchez does not believe she is reaping the benefits of government efficiency.
“It’s frustrating,” she said, noting that a call that would once take 15 minutes now involves much more work.”
…
“Maria Town, president and chief executive of the American Assn. of People with Disabilities, told The Times that the system changes were not only hurting people’s ability to sign up and enroll for benefits. People already connected to the system who needed support were also having trouble appealing benefits decisions or accessing medical services.
“You can’t get anyone on the phone,” she said.
Even before Trump took office, Town said, the system had challenges: About 30,000 disabled people died in 2023 waiting for their SSDI application to be approved.”
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“About five months ago, Taylor said, he asked for the same letter at the same office and did not run into any issues. He didn’t know what to make of the difference and had not followed the changes in the White House.
“If this is what they’re doing in Washington, it isn’t fair to everyone else,” he said. “Poor people always seem to get the worst of it.””
https://www.yahoo.com/news/shambles-doge-cuts-bring-chaos-100033401.html
“Office closures, staffing and service cuts, and policy changes at the Social Security Administration (SSA) have caused “complete, utter chaos” and are threatening to send the agency into a “death spiral”, according to workers at the agency.
The SSA operates the largest government program in the US, administering social insurance programs, including retirement, disability and survivor benefits.”
https://www.yahoo.com/news/doge-attack-social-security-causing-100049053.html
Musk is either confused or lying when he talks about Social Security.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bVqrKteSvxs
Trump and Musk Social Security cuts are causing difficulties for recipients.
Cuts include attempts to stop people from scamming recipients and customer service.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_IFJIxDRd0E
“But less than 1 percent of Social Security’s payments in recent years were determined to be improper – often the result of an accidental oversight or change in benefit status, according to a report last year by the agency’s inspector general. That works out to about $9 billion a year, and more than two-thirds of the mistaken payments were eventually clawed back. Another agency audit, which looked only at payments to retired workers, survivors and people with disabilities, found fraud was listed as the cause behind just 3 percent of improper benefit payments.”
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“The degree of scrutiny by Social Security’s IG can be intense. One report issued by the office earlier this month found that a partner agency in Mississippi had incorrectly made a $14 payment because of a data-entry error.
Social Security’s inspector general was fired in the first days of the Trump administration, along with top internal investigators at 16 other government agencies. Although the office has continued to operate, it is expected to lose up to 20 percent of its staff because of budget cuts, Rose said.”
https://www.yahoo.com/news/why-doge-struggling-fraud-social-132603335.html
Trump and Musk are exaggerating the level of fraud in Social Security and are cutting it in a way that will hurt seniors.
Musk has unlimited money to spend on political campaigns, giving him great influence over congress members who fear Musk will spend money for their primary opponents.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b6ErMIViLzM
Social Security keeps 2/3s of our elderly out of poverty.
Illegal immigrants are a net positive to Social Security because they sometimes pay into it and rarely get anything out of it.
Taxation to fund welfare for our society is not punishment.
Too many people don’t make enough to save enough for retirement without Social Security. We can’t realistically expect people to save enough to retire without Social Security.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sD2mpvz7Efk
“”Part of the confusion comes from Social Security’s software system based on the COBOL programming language, which has a lack of date type,” reported the Associated Press last month in response to DOGE reports about improper payments. “This means that some entries with missing or incomplete birthdates will default to a reference point of more than 150 years ago.” (The agency auto-stops payments to those older than 115.) The Social Security Administration’s inspector general has admitted as much: The agency is really struggling to figure out how to “properly annotate death information in its database” per the A.P., and there are nearly 20 million Social Security numbers of people born in 1920 and earlier who haven’t been marked as dead. But Trump is conflating “not marked as dead in a database” with “received benefits”—an absolutely wild leap we have no evidence to support. In fact, the July 2023 report from the inspector general notes that “almost none of the numberholders discussed in the report currently receive SSA payments.””
https://reason.com/2025/03/05/dead-people-arent-bankrupting-us/