Why Billionaires Hate Social Security

And why the rest of us should be concerned.

Consider the billionaire. 

I’m not talking about people who were born into wealth; they have their own issues. Let us specifically consider the so-called “self-made” wealthy person, the driven CEO or investor. He (and it is almost always a “he” in our society) is likely to share some characteristics with other billionaires and members of his cohort. Social science and simple observation tell us that these powerful figures are more likely than other people to be:

• greedy

• addicted to making money (which is psychologically distinct from greed)

• obsessed with making money, which leads to bad behavior

• surprisingly worried about the money they have

• less empathetic and more self-interested than other people

• breakers of certain laws and social norms

• less charitable on a percentage basis 

• very politically influential

• and, determined to cut Social Security.

About that last item: While there may be exceptions here and there, the billionaire class overall is overwhelmingly opposed to Social Security. Most wealthy people would, in fact, like to see its benefits slashed. A 2013 study compared the political opinions of the wealthy with those of voters as a whole and found “major disagreement” between the two groups regarding Social Security. Among all voters, there was a 46 percent gap in favor of expanding its benefits rather than cutting them. The wealthy had the opposite take; they favored cuts, rather than expansion, by a gap of 33 percent.

Strikingly, the richer someone was, the likelier they were to want Social Security cuts. Each additional $10 million in personal wealth added measurably to the desire for Social Security cuts. The authors note that “this finding may help explain why cutting these popular programs has remained on the political agenda.” 

Ya think? 

Billionaires pay for think tanks and news outlets which fill the airways with lurid talk about the program’s costs. Billionaires and corporate CEOS have more political influence than any other part of society. That’s why, despite the outcome of the recent ‘debt ceiling’ crisis, they still represent an existential threat to Social Security.

Distraction

The real goal of billionaire-funded Social Security rhetoric is to prevent the public from drawing a connection between Social Security’s finances, the working-class retirement crisis, and the ludicrous amounts of wealth held by America’s billionaires. 

We are supposed to be horrified, for example, by the gap between Social Security’s income ($1.244 trillion for this year) and its cash outlays ($1.237 trillion). We are not supposed to notice that Michael Bloomberg’s wealth gain since September of last year ($17.7 billion*) would cover almost the entire 2023 shortfall of $22 billion all by itself, or that the entire amount could be recouped by throwing in Bill Gates’ gains during the same period. 

That’s right: the nine-month income of two billionaires alone would erase Social Security’s entire actuarial imbalance for a full year. (And 2022 was a bad year for billionaires; “bad,” of course, being a very relative term.)

A trillion-plus dollars sounds like a lot of money, and it is. But the personal wealth of just ten Americans would cover Social Security’s entire budget for an entire year. Not that it would, at least under current law. The law dictates that Social Security’s costs be covered by a payroll tax levied for that purpose alone. But a wealth tax, or something like it, could be a popular option if the program faces a real funding crisis. 

There are already sound proposals to “scrap the cap” on income that is taxed for Social Security, and to include investment and other sources of income in that tax. Billionaires would face a tax hike under these proposals, although their total taxes would still be well below mid-20^th century norms.

The tax question surely accounts for some of the billionaires’ antipathy toward Social Security but, even so, their feelings seem to run unusually high on the subject. 

What They Say

The billionaires’ vituperation toward Social Security can be seen in Elon Musk’s ill-informed tweet about it (which The Intercept’s Jon Schwarz ably dissected). It can be found in CEO conclaves like “Fix the Debt,” where the heads of corporations like JetBlue, Bridgestone, and Microsoft, as well as government largesse recipients like Honeywell, GE, Boeing, Bank of America, and Goldman Sachs assembled to attack programs “entitlements.”

It oozes through op-eds like this one from predatory billionaire Steve Schwarzman, who magnanimously promised to “share the pain” of financial sacrifice with elderly Social Security recipients living on a few hundred dollars a month. (5.5 million seniors reportedly faced food insecurity in 2021; Schwarzman “took home a record $1.27 billion for 2022”.) 

It’s reflected in Mitt Romney’s bitter words at a 2012 fundraiser, when he told a roomful of fellow rich people that “they”—it’s always “they,” not “us”—"they believe the government has a responsibility to care for them, that they are entitled: to health care, to food, to housing, you name it.”

Added Romney, “That's an entitlement."

Most of all, it can be seen in works of the late billionaire Peter G. Peterson, a conservative hedge funder and former Nixon cabinet member who lavished money on politicians from both parties in pursuit of his curious obsession: to reduce government spending, with a special focus on cuts to Social Security and Medicare. The foundation, astroturf groups, and think tanks Peterson created have worked for decades to elevate the national debt above all other policymaking concerns, regardless of the effect on working Americans, with a special focus on cuts to Social Security and Medicare.

The goal is to frame Social Security cuts in false, technocratic terms as the inevitable outcome of simple arithmetic. They want it to look as if the decision to cut benefits made itself. That way, they leave no fingerprints on the corpse of retirement security.

Why They Hate

But why? Why do the ultra-wealthy hate Social Security so much? It’s not just self-interest, although there is certainly that. The answer lies in the anthropology, as well as the accountancy, of the billionaire class. Social Security represents everything the typical billionaire loathes, including community, solidarity, and the empowerment of the working class. 

Billionaire CEOs belong to a group whose membership is earned through obsession, greed, competitiveness, and lack of empathy. It is a population self-selected for sociopathy and work-life imbalance. It’s hard to make a billion dollars without cheating people, and it’s hard to cheat people when you see them – really see them, through the eyes of understanding and emotion. That’s why someone like Schwarzman can equate his own “sacrifice” (of what, a fifth or sixth yacht?) with the suffering of an ailing grandmother trying to get by on $75 per week.

It's impossible to bargain with them by telling them they already have enough money to live like an emperor. At that level, money works the way social media likes work for some other people: it doesn’t affect their lives in any material way, but it boosts their sense of worth and validation. That’s why they’ll never quit. That’s why they’ll never say, “I have enough.” There is always someone else who is gaining on them every time they stop to eat, sleep, make love, express an emotion ...

Sure, they’ll write a check to charity from time to time. That’s good for the ego. It brings applause, praise, black-tie dinners, and fawning requests for more money. But Social Security isn’t charity, and that galls them. Social Security is run for working people – people who know they have earned those benefits. Pay a tax, with no effusive speeches or stroking of the ego for America’s 0.001 percent? The idea offends their sense of self-importance.

This is why they love to hear politicians like Alan Simpson insult Social Security recipients by calling them “greedy geezers.” They think they’ve won life’s race. People who have lived other kinds of lives – filled, perhaps, with love and kindness rather than competition and exploitation – are losers to them. In their minds, people like that are nothing. For them to ask anything of the wealthy is, well, impudence.

Controlling the Discourse

Unfortunately, the billionaire class increasingly controls US news outlets. Their obsession has warped the national discourse for decades. It has wormed its way into the media ecosystem, as billionaire-funded think tanks, lobbying groups, and politicians flood the airwaves and newspapers with false talking points about the “unaffordability” of such programs. “Both Medicare and Social Security are going broke and taking a larger share of the budget in the process,” ABC’s Martha Raddatz once told the national audience for a vice presidential debate. (Neither half of that statement is true.)

Their obsession is reflected in a news industry that has been increasingly centralized under billionaire control. Media elites sometimes sounded like jilted lovers when they reported that neither party pushed for Social Security or Medicare cuts in the debt ceiling deal.

The Washington Post, which often channels billionaire views on Social Security, ran a must-read article under the headline, “How a billionaires boys’ club came to dominate the public square.” As Michael Scherer and Sarah Ellison note, 

“Technological change and the fortunes it created have given a vanishingly small club of massively wealthy individuals the ability to play arbiter, moderator and bankroller of not only the information that feeds the nation’s discourse but also the architecture that undergirds it.”

The billionaires’ obsession is also reflected at non-profit outlets like NPR—which, despite the word “public” in its name, relies heavily on corporate and billionaire donors for survival. 

Dialing for Dollars

What the billionaires say, usually goes. “... (E)conomic elites and organized groups representing business interests have substantial independent impacts on U.S. government policy,” a 2014 study found, “while average citizens and mass-based interest groups have little or no independent influence.”

Things have only gotten worse since then. Billionaires poured nearly $1 billion($881,000,000) into the last round of congressional elections. How does this affect policy? Politicians who carry out the wishes of billionaires, corporate CEOs, and lobbyists raise more money, of course. But there is also a process of acculturation, where elected officials become so steeped in the world of elite consensus that they come to believe in it themselves. 

Consider, for example, the infamous slide deck which advised incoming Congressional Democrats to spend four hours a day on “call time” and one hour per day on “strategic outreach,” both of which involve raising money for their next campaign. Imagine spending four to five hours a day calling people who despise Social Security, and it soon becomes clear that only a miracle has protected Social Security so far—and miracles don’t last forever.

Unless you’re a candidate with mass support like Bernie Sanders, campaign fundraising requires constant immersion in the anti-Social Security mindset of the ultra-wealthy—which, when combined with the GOP’s longstanding hostility to the program, means that the people who make our laws are steeped in a worldview that considers “entitlement programs” expensive and superfluous. 

That’s why it would be a mistake to assume that the recent “debt ceiling deal” means that Social Security is safe. Neither party wanted to take the unpopular step of calling for benefit cuts in this round of negotiations. But the billionaires and corporations who drive our political system won’t stop trying. That’s how they got where they are; by persisting until they win.

Previous attempts to cut Social Security have come in the form of ‘bipartisan commissions’ whose role was to obscure the process and shield both parties from blame. (Mitt Romney’s TRUST Act would follow the same playbook, as would other billionaire-backed proposals.) The White House has correctly called these commissions “death panels,” which may be one reason why billionaires primarily contributed to Republican candidates in the last election cycle. But public opinion must be mobilized to prevent any further softening of President Biden’s position on Social Security, before the billionaires let their money do the talking in the 2024 race. 

Because, when it comes to money in politics, Bob Dylan’s words hold true: money doesn’t talk, it swears.