I don’t think I can take much more of this. As someone on the edge of retirement, I have to hear the Republicans scheming to kill social security, which is bad enough, but here’s Ed Zitron predicting the complete obliteration of retirement funds thanks to the imminent detonation of the AI bubble.
Unfortunately, it all makes sense. Our economy seems to be dedicated to pumping up the fortunes of about a dozen people, and I’m not one of them.
That this is a really bad idea is obvious.
.1. Social Security and Medicare are self funding programs.
They have zero to do with our annual deficits or our National Debt.
,2, Social Security will never run out of money!!!
What will happen in the worst case is that in 2032, payouts will exceed paid in + surplus.
This means that benefits will have to be reduced to 79% of the current amounts.
.3. This is a disaster but 79% is a whole lot better than 0%.
.4. That this will happen has been known for decades. It is simple math.
There are simple and obvious ways to fix this. Neither the GOP or the Democrats have had the courage and abilities to fix this.
.5. The Republicans have been trying to kill Social Security since Roosevelt introduced it in 1936. For no real reason except that it helps all US residents and they are horrible people.
Social Security has been a very successful program and is wildly popular and a part of life for almost all Americans.
You can live on just Social Security as a retirement income.
It’s not easy and you are not going to have a high standard of living most of the time but it is possible.
I volunteer with a program for low income seniors and disabled.
They are all on Social Security.
They are at least housed in reasonable conditions. None of them have cars though because they can’t afford them.
Some of them also get Food Stamps (SNAP).
Before they got on Social Security, some of them were homeless.
For these people, cuts in Social Security benefits will be a disaster.
PS: Social Security is often called an “entitlement”.
This isn’t accurate.
It is a pension plan. Those payouts are your money, that you paid in.
To be clear, they are called an “entitlement” by the GOP, because, to the GOP everything is either something you “didn’t earn”, i.e., didn’t lie, cheat, or steal, via legal loopholes, or something you are “entitled to”, which, in their case is, again, only the right to lie, cheat, or steal from other people. Calling it such is exactly identical to “family values” to them – its something they don’t actually have, redefine to mean horrible things, when they do claim to have it, and willfully deny to everyone else. The “rich” are “entitled”, but will never call it this, but will instead call it, “earned through hard work”. The poor, to them, are entitled to nothing, and actually earn what they have through hard work, and thus, in their backwards world, “do not deserve anything, and are acting like they are entitled to it.”
Also, no, nothing the government has, for anything, no matter what its specifically earmarked for, collected for, etc., is, in their twisted world, “your money”, its their money, and they only call it “your money” when they intend to lie, cheat you of it, or steal it outright for some other purpose.
Literally the only thing they know how to do is doublespeak. And, lets be honest here, they do this religiously (starting with their religion and its own twisted definitions, like “free will” meaning, “Do what I say, or I will torture you for not doing it.”)
In other words, as I’ve been saying for years: plutocratic crapitallism destroys anyone who is not a billionaire magat. All that to further their insatiable desire for obscene wealth and power. Here are recent examples:
Americans now know beyond any reasonable doubt that they’re on the losing side of a class war, and are justifiably pissed, . . . the monied interests were screwing them over
by Robert Reich | June 23, 2026
http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/robert-reich/117363/class-warriors-class-worriers-and-class-wimps
and
GOP has a new plan to kill off Medicare and Social Security
https://www.salon.com/2026/06/13/gop-has-a-new-plan-to-kill-off-medicare-and-social-security/
and from the richest, bigliest ahole of them all:
‘Time to Sue This Liar’: Trillionaire Elon Musk Threatens Ro Khanna for Warning of 4.5 Million Child Deaths From DOGE Cuts
https://www.commondreams.org/news/elon-musk-ro-khanna</ii
Of course shithead schumer and jerkoff jeffries aren’t worried. They have their own wealth to protect them and they don’t give a rat’s rectum about us!
I get Zitron’s newsletter by email. He borders on hyperbole, but the essence of what he writes is true and should scare the crap out of us.
Hey magat aholes! IF YOU RUIN SOCIAL SECURITY AND MEDICARE, YOU WILL BE STEALING FROM MILLIONS OF PEOPLE. We paid into social security and medicare for decades as an involuntary investment.
Lets get the torches and pitchforks ready!
There are mathematical models (now apparently confirmed by observation) that predict wealth to automatically accumulate at the actors that are already richest.
It would probably be an interesting task to calculate how incompetent these actors are allowed to be in these models for this process to continue…
My reply to @7 drdrdrdrdralhazeneuler regarding ‘calculate how incompetent these actors are allowed to be in these models for this process to continue…’
We don’t need to calculate it. It has been clearly shown for decades that the ‘monied’ have achieved wealth growth momentum that is almost impossible to wreck with their incompetence. Prime example the magat-in-chief tRUMP!