From Tangle newsletter on Trump's address to Congress.: > Trump is still repeating a lot of nonsense about Social Security payments to 150-year-old Americans. To recap: We know the Social Security Administration (SSA) issues erroneous payments. Last year the SSA inspector general found $71.8 billion in improper payments from 2015 to 2022 (about 0.84% of the $8.6 trillion in payments over that time). Another inspector general report from 2021 found that the SSA made $298 million in payments to 24,000 dead beneficiaries. But Musk has made much more sweeping claims on X and is pretending DOGE uncovered this. A lot of people explained to Musk that he was misunderstanding the data he was looking at, but he has not corrected the record. Now the president is running with it, even after his own appointed Social Security administrator said “recent reporting” (from Musk and Trump) was misinforming people about fraudulent payments.
Jeff Stein on X: "Elon Musk's pick to run the Social Security Administration, now taking over the agency, is out with a statement today in which he acknowledges that people in the Social Security database who are over 100 years old are "not necessarily receiving benefits" Trump had said "millions https://t.co/NFya0iRi3h" / X
Besides Donald Trump, Elon Musk and his fellow DOGE head Vivek Ramaswamy, at least 11 billionaires will be serving key roles in the administration.
Whether it acts as a government for billionaires could test and potentially tarnish his populist legacy.
— Axios (@axios)
yammi on Twitter
wow so gorgeous pic.twitter.com/K8eZgU4xPo— yammi (@sighyam) June 2, 2023
Lakyn Thee Stylist on Twitter
“Average rent in the US is currently about $1,700. For you to be "financially stable" aka not at heightened risk of homelessness, it's advised you make 3x your rent. That's $61,200/yr. That's the minimum we should ALL be making to be STABLE. So, no, 75k is not outrageous wealth.”