Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman on Wednesday buried billionaire Elon Musk for his reported plans to gut the Social Security Administration by cutting telephone services for beneficiaries.
Writing on his Substack page, Krugman cites reports that Musk intends to gum up beneficiaries' abilities to get information about their benefits over the phone by forcing them to verify their identities either over the internet or by visiting field offices in person.
"Bear in mind that we’re talking about older and/or disabled Americans, many of whom are unable to access the internet and physically unable to visit SSA offices — which would in any case be overwhelmed by the increased traffic, given that the agency is already facing large staffing cuts," Krugman explains. "So this would be a move of almost cartoonish cruelty, and a nightmare for millions of Americans."
Krugman then speculates why Musk might undertake such an initiative, and he doesn't think that it's about trying to save money for American taxpayers.
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"My guess, instead, is that it’s an ego thing, that Social Security has become to Musk what Canada has become to Donald Trump. Both men at one point said something stupid, something that would have turned them into laughingstocks if there weren’t so much fear in the air."
Krugman muses that Musk is taking a hatchet to Social Security beneficiaries' ability to access their benefits because he has to prove his false claim that the administration is making payments to millions of dead people.
Thus, if beneficiaries are unable verify their identities over the phone and if their local SSA office has shut down, Musk will claim that they had been dead this entire time and thus not eligible to receive benefits.
"There will, I expect and hope, be a huge backlash if the plan to effectively cut off millions from benefits goes through," the economist concludes. "But don’t count on Musk — or Trump — to change course. These are men with fragile egos, who never, ever admit being wrong."