Trump Labor Statistics Pick Called Social Security a 'Ponzi Scheme' That Should Be Shuttered

from Common Dreams

U.S. President Donald Trump's pick to replace the top labor statistics official he fired earlier this month has called Social Security a "Ponzi scheme" that needs to be "sunset," comments that critics said further disqualify the nominee for the key government role.

During a December 2024 radio interview, Heritage Foundation economist E.J. Antoni said it is a "mathematical fiction" that Social Security "can go on forever" and called for "some kind of transition program where unfortunately you'll need a generation of people who pay Social Security taxes, but never actually receive any of those benefits."

"That's the price to pay for unwinding a Ponzi scheme that was foisted on the American people by the Democrats in the 1930s," Antoni continued. "You're not going to be able to sustain a Ponzi scheme like Social Security. Eventually, you need to sunset the program."

Rep. John Larson (D-Conn.), one of Social Security's most vocal defenders in Congress, said Antoni's position on the program matters because "Bureau of Labor Statistics data is what determines the annual cost-of-living adjustment for Social Security benefits."

"It should alarm everyone when a yes-man determined to end Social Security is installed in this position," Larson said in a statement. "I call on every Senate Republican to stand with Democrats and reject this extreme nominee—before our seniors are denied the benefits they earned through a lifetime of hard work."...

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Monday Video Part 2

 

This is about Elon Musk. It's about epigenetic reprogramming of aging. It's about rapid growth cancers and telemeres. It's about Privatizing Social Security and remaking it in a code that will better sync up with Elon Musk's 'everything app'  It's about our future. It's about our present.

epigenetic reprogramming of aging https://nomadiceveryman.blogspot.com/search/label/epigenetic%20reprogramming

Dr. Campbell  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6DtWo3iO_X0&t=821s

Jessie Dollarmore  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zDWxMmD2vro&t=354s

Parkrose Permaculture  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9z48jkaMc-U

Bourla and RFK Jr. making nice  https://www.businessinsider.com/pfizer-ceo-optimistic-about-working-with-trump-administration-rfk-jr-2025-2

Ellison and Moderna making plans  https://www.investors.com/news/technology/moderna-stock-larry-ellison-ai-mrna-medicines-cancer-vaccines/

Direct Support 

Monday Video Part 1

This is about Elon Musk. It's about epigenetic reprogramming of aging. It's about rapid growth cancers and telemeres. It's about Privatizing Social Security and remaking it in a code that will better sync up with Elon Musk's 'everything app'  It's about our future. It's about our present.

epigenetic reprogramming of aging https://nomadiceveryman.blogspot.com/search/label/epigenetic%20reprogramming

Dr. Campbell  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6DtWo3iO_X0&t=821s

Jessie Dollarmore  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zDWxMmD2vro&t=354s

Parkrose Permaculture  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9z48jkaMc-U

Bourla and RFK Jr. making nice  https://www.businessinsider.com/pfizer-ceo-optimistic-about-working-with-trump-administration-rfk-jr-2025-2

Ellison and Moderna making plans  https://www.investors.com/news/technology/moderna-stock-larry-ellison-ai-mrna-medicines-cancer-vaccines/

Direct Support 

Stricter Social Security measures may challenge elderly and disabled beneficiaries

from Ch. 13 WHAM

Some 70 million Americans rely on Social Security benefits. As of Monday, the Social Security Administration will imposing stricter identity-proofing measures.

Millions of recipients and applicants will no longer be able to phone their information in. Instead, they will have to come to regional offices in person or complete forms online.

For those with limited transportation or computer access, that could be a problem. It's all part of an effort by the Trump administration to root out what it calls Social Security fraud, waste and abuse.

“I think it's bad because the folks that it's going to impact are the elderly and the disabled," said Lisa Arrington, an attorney who specializes in elder law.

“My elderly clients, they can't use email, they don't have a computer," Arrington continued. "And those are the people that are going to be forced to come in here (the Social Security office) physically."

John Ettlie said he’s fortunate to have a car. For other seniors, though, "It's going to be difficult."

"I suppose they could take Uber if they're aware," he said. "A lot of people are retired, don't even have a computer, so they may not even aware that you have to come in person."...

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If you’re not scared about Social Security, you should be

from Des Moines Register

What the heck is happening here?  

We believe there’s a plan at work: All the disruption at Social Security is designed to cause the program to eventually collapse.

Here’s the scenario: Continued declines in service lead to public frustration and anger. Citizens come to believe what they’re being told: the government can’t do anything well.  People lose faith in the system and become ready to accept radical change.

In other words, break it to fix it.

And the fix? Privatize the system. Let banks and financial firms run it. Turn Social Security contributions into investments in stocks, bonds, crypto or whatever. End guaranteed benefits and instead have every American responsible for their investment return, with some people succeeding and some failing.

President George W. Bush wanted to do this back in 2005. His plan failed because Americans liked Social Security and they had confidence in it. It also failed because enough members of Congress were independent-minded and wouldn’t go along...

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Musk Suggests His Team Will Scrutinize Social Security and Entitlement Spending

from the NYT

Elon Musk, the world’s richest individual, suggested on Monday that his government cost-cutting team would scrutinize Social Security and other entitlement spending, describing the expenditures as rife with fraudulent transactions and repeating a conspiracy theory that Democrats were using the programs as a “gigantic magnet to attract illegal immigrants and have them stay in the country.”

In an interview with Larry Kudlow, a Fox Business commentator who served as Mr. Trump’s chief economic adviser in his first term, Mr. Musk said that his team now numbered over 100 staff members and repeated familiar and unsupported claims about entitlement spending that dovetailed with the great replacement conspiracy theory — the idea that white Americans are deliberately being pushed out by noncitizens — which Mr. Musk has nodded to on other occasions.

“The waste and fraud in entitlement spending, which is most of the federal spending, is entitlements,” he claimed, “so that’s the big one to eliminate.”

Earlier this month, Mr. Musk referred to Social Security as “the biggest Ponzi scheme of all time.” And he has dispatched members of his cost-cutting team — known as the Department of Government Efficiency — to access databases housed at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, a federal agency that manages the health coverage of more than 100 million people, to flag suspicious payments...

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How Social Security cuts could put millions of older Americans at risk

from PBS

Laura Barron-Lopez:

The acting agency head told employees this week that it's Musk and DOGE that are calling the shots at SSA.

The Washington Post reported that Leland Dudek told senior staff at SSA that Musk's team of — quote — "outsiders who are unfamiliar with nuances of SSA programs are making decisions and that they will make mistakes."

And, this morning, the agency told its workers they can no longer use their government computers to look at, among other things, news Web sites, even blocking access to some of them. The restriction was said to help protect sensitive information. But news sites and obituaries are often relied on to confirm death information and prevent fraud.

For a closer look at the effect of potential cuts to Social Security, I'm joined by Martin O'Malley, who was the commissioner of SSA during the Biden administration and previously served as the governor of Maryland.

Governor O'Malley, thank you so much for joining the "News Hour."

Former Social Security head claims DOGE will cause payment interruptions

(The DOGE fascists and Nazis are going to cut costs at the SSA by cutting employee numbers from 57,000 to 50,000. The plan is to save government money so they can justify Trump's tax breaks for billionaires like Trump and Elon Musk who runs DOGE supposedly. The layoffs will put lots of people out of work and cause delays on everything at the administration including payments. They tried to lie about waste and fraud over there but people fact checked them and discovered they were lying... so now they are firing a bunch of people instead. In the end they WANT the delays and the problems so they can come back in 6 months and say 'see? Social Security doesn't work cus Gubmint so we have to PRIVATIZE it' and then Elon and Trump and Thiel and all their billionaire friends get to ransack that money pot as well. This is sickening and obscene.) 

from SAN

A former director of the U.S. Social Security Administration (SSA) claims that reduction efforts by the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) will lead to an interruption of benefits. The administration has reportedly never missed a payment, but the former agency head predicted it could happen in the near future.

Martin O’Malley, the former Democratic Maryland governor who former President Joe Biden tapped to run SSA, told CNBC that payment interruptions could come as soon as this spring. 

“Ultimately, you’re going to see the system collapse and an interruption of benefits,” O’Malley said. “I believe you will see that within the next 30 to 90 days.”...

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Musk, Social Security, and the Ponzi-Scheme Boomerang

 

from Common Dreams

...

Musk has been recruited by Trump to take on the role of special advisor for allegedly seeking to root out waste, fraud and abuse from the federal bureaucracy, even as Musk’s private companies continue to profit in the millions of dollars from contracts from that bureaucracy. For some reason, Musk’s own contracts have been exempted from his investigations, but Social Security has not. Dismantling the most prominent social welfare program of the last century is undoubtedly an extremist undertaking and Musk is employing Trumpism as a discourse to help make that happen. Whether he succeeds is dependent in no small part on our ability to call out and resist his verbal jujitsu.

Dismantling Social Security would be very significant, for it not only provides major benefits to over 70 million retirees and persons receiving disability and survivor benefits (about one in five Americans). The program was enacted by Congress during the Great Depression with the Economic Security Act of 1935 (which quickly came to be known as the Social Security Act). It has become the cornerstone of the American welfare state, limited as it is compared to its counterparts in the rest of the developed world. It is nonetheless the most effective anti-poverty program in the history of the country, basically reducing the poverty rate among the elderly by half once its benefits started getting adjusted annually in 1972 to keep up with inflation. It has long been considered the “third rail” of American politics for any politician who tries to tamper with it usually ends up getting repudiated, just as President George Bush did when he tried to privatize it after winning re-election in 2004. Now Trump is going down that road but using the discourse of Trumpism to legitimate undermining this bedrock foundation of the U.S. welfare state.

Calling Social Security the “biggest Ponzi scheme in American history” is pure Trumpism. It is a boomerang. Many people have pointed out the Ponzi-scheme nature of Musk’s own preferred cryptocurrency Dogecoin. Dogecoin was the source for Musk calling his anti-federal government initiative “DOGE” (Department of Government Efficiency). Musk’s response was like him saying “no Dogecoin is not a Ponzi scheme, but Social Security is,” thereby redirecting the criticism of Dogecoin (and all cryptocurrencies) toward the government’s largest and most effective social welfare program. Cryptocurrencies, like Dogecoin, but also even more prominently Bitcoin, have been, for the last decade or so, very popular, especially with people who want to be free of having to rely on government-backed currency like the dollar. Cryptocurrencies have an anti-government elan that attracts all kinds of people, including libertarians and even anarchists. Calling Social Security the biggest Ponzi scheme in history is an anti-government boomerang perpetuated in the name of speculators who want to be free of government regulation...

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Official Installed by Trump Moves to 'Demolish' Social Security Administration

from Common Dreams

The acting leader of the Social Security Administration reportedly instructed managers earlier this week to draw up plans for a 50% cut to the agency's workforce, a push that advocates and lawmakers said would result in the gutting or total closure of local field offices—and likely benefit disruptions.

The American Prospect first reported the request from Leland Dudek, whom Trump installed as SSA commissioner earlier this month after the agency's former head resigned following a clash with Elon Musk's deputies over their attempts to access highly sensitive personal data. At the time he was elevated to the helm of SSA, Dudek was under investigation for allegedly sharing information with Musk's team improperly.

According to the Prospect, the deadline for SSA managers to comply with Dudek's request for mass-firing plans was Wednesday afternoon.

"The decision could target one of the government's most prominent public-facing initiatives: SSA field offices, where seniors, people with disabilities, and survivors whose parents have died can sign up for benefits and get information," the outlet noted. "In an email to the Prospect, SSA would not confirm any reductions in its workforce beyond the abolition of two small internal offices announced this week... Sources have speculated to the Prospect that the terminations are being done piecemeal to avoid headlines of tens of thousands of jobs lost."...

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