Musk is an idiot with a Nazi axe to grind

When confronted with the lie about USAID sending $50 million worth of condoms to Gaza, Elon Musk said something worth noting. 

Musk acknowledged that "some of the things I say will be incorrect and should be corrected." 

Given that he and his DOGE minions haven't produced much (if any) evidence of fraud, it would be more accurate of him to acknowledge that "most of the things I say will be incorrect." But it's also important to notice where he is aiming his "incorrect" statements. Much like USAID, they're likely at agencies/programs, he is preparing to take down.

One of them is the child tax credit. Musk recently responded to this post on X by saying, "such a big jump in such a short time doesn't make sense."

Did you know the IRS is one of the largest providers of Welfare in the USA?

The IRS relies on US Residents (not just citizens) self-certifying their qualification for these IRS Welfare programs that are effectively a "negative income tax".

From 2011-2019, there were ~30M IRS… pic.twitter.com/HYBOF0Evsz

— ~~datahazard~~ (@fentasyl) February 15, 2025

The bar they're referring to is the light green one labelled "refundable credits" because you can get a refund even if you don't owe any tax. Musk's response makes sense only if you are ignorant of two facts:

1. 2020 was the year of the COVID pandemic, when so many people lost jobs and increased their likelihood of qualifying for the refundable child tax credit, and
2. 2021 was the year that Biden and Democrats passed the American Rescue Plan, temporarily increasing the child tax credit from $1,400 per child to $3,600. 

Equally ignorant are Musk's attacks on Social Security. During that same press conference where he admitted that he'd say things that are incorrect, the shadow president suggested that people who are 150 years old are receiving Social Security payments. He followed that up with this post on Friday.

His reference to vampires suggests that he thinks this is all some kind of joke. Which it isn't! 

But here's the thing: rather than spread lies about fraud, Musk could have checked out a report from the Social Security Inspector General (that Trump fired) published less than two years ago about this very topic. They found that "Years of birth for 18.9 million numberholders born in 1920 or earlier have no death information on their Numident [SSA's computer database file] record." 

So Musk and his minions have not uncovered anything new. But here's what the IG also reported: approximately 18.4 million (98%) of those numberholders are not currently receiving SSA payments. At the most, that means a potential 2% rate of fraud on the $1.35 trillion in Social Security payments per year.

But even those numbers overestimate the problem. Here are some actual facts about Social Security:

As a percentage of all payments, improper payments account for 0.84% of the total, the inspector general has found.

That’s "better than any private insurance company in the nation," and with a lower cost of administration, said Henry J. Aaron, a fellow with the Brookings Institution think tank and a former chair of the Social Security Advisory Board.

The fact is that Musk thinks he's some kind of genius when instead, he's just an idiot with a Nazi axe to grind. Perhaps that makes him less dangerous than an intelligent/informed person with a Nazi axe to grind. But that's debatable.