robertreich – march 2, 2025 Elon Musk called Social Security a “ponzi scheme.” This is absolute rubbish. Social Security has paid every benefit owed to every eligible American for 85 years. Perhaps the bigger “ponzi scheme” is the $38 billion spent by taxpayers to prop up his corporations?
This social security lie is the biggest propaganda soundbite pushed out into the discourse. It leverages the fact that people tend to stay on autopilot and not engage in “system two” critical thinking, and this makes it likely for someone to succumb to system 1 error thinking there’s something to this, when of course if you think things through, you know that there’s no there there with this argument, and also that of course you can’t just get rid of social security and have all the senior citizens just be broke, the nursing homes go broke, the old people with no children will be homeless, disabled people will be what? It just doesn’t make any sense if you think things through. But a lot of propaganda depends on people not thinking things through.
“And so I would often hear something like the following — “Yes, yes. I understand that the people in your experiments and some of the people I know do foolish things, but in markets, then — and then I claim…” They could never quite finish this sentence without literally waving their hands, and the argument is somehow if you choose the wrong career or fail to save for retirement, that the market will somehow push you back toward being rational. There’s a reason why no one can make this argument without waving their hands, and that’s because the argument is just silly. You know, if you don’t save enough for retirement, what happens to you? You’re poor when you’re old. The market doesn’t discipline you. Suppose people have a weakness for gambling. What’s going to happen? Will people build casinos, or will they offer programs to help people curb their gambling addiction? Well, people have made a lot more money on casinos than on programs to stop gambling.”— Richard Thaler on PBS – Hacking Your Mind