Elon Musk, on Feb. 12, boosted a post on X that described as parasites those who depend on government services (https://www.yahoo.com/news/fact-check-musk-reposted-meme-120000227.html).
Leaving aside the morality of a billionaire insulting millions of Americans, Musk asks an important question; who are the parasites?
To Musk, they are citizens who depend on services like Social Security and Medicaid for their survival.
Though he called Social Security a Ponzi scheme (https://finance.yahoo.com/news/elon-musk-once-again-calls-010040388.html), it is a source of funds into which each of us pays throughout our working lives and on which we draw when no longer employed.
What Musk calls a “scam” is a program through which every working generation supports its elders in anticipation of receiving funds provided by their juniors. It is our collective savings account through which we invest in each other. Musk seems to think that the 25% of Americans who depend on Social Security qualify as freeloaders because we draw from that account.
Americans who dutifully paid into Social Security contributed a great deal to this country and deserve a chance to retire. I challenge Musk to prove otherwise.
Then there are Americans who, having no more than $2,000 in assets, rely on Medicaid to cover vital medical costs.
Fully 64% of Medicaid recipients work, often for companies like Walmart, McDonalds, Amazon, and Dollar General (https://www.cnbc.com/2020/11/19/walmart-and-mcdonalds-among-top-employers-of-medicaid-and-food-stamp-beneficiaries.html; https://www.kff.org/medicaid/issue-brief/understanding-the-intersection-of-medicaid-and-work-an-update/). CEOs of these and other businesses rely on Medicaid to close the gap between what they pay their workers and what those employees need to survive. Are those who earn so little that they have to get health insurance through Medicaid parasites?
Or are the freeloaders employers who, rather than providing adequate benefits, rely on our taxes to keep their workers healthy and alive?
The sick, underpaid, poor, and retirees are not parasites. Those who use our taxes to enrich themselves while exploiting workers are the true freeloaders.
Musk, buffered by great wealth and a recipient of at least $38 billion in government contracts, fails to make that distinction. He is, therefore, unqualified to slash the very services for which we pay and on which we depend.
Edward Schortman
Granville, Ohio