How the Social Safety Net Became for ‘Suckers’

IOver the past two months, Elon Musk has inserted himself in a range of government functions on the grounds that he and his team, the Ministry of Government efficiency (DOGE), have an urgent mandate to eliminate “government waste”. At first, Musk’s team claimed to see fraud everywhere: he reported that FEMA sent migrants to “luxury hotels” and republished an assertion that USAID is “essentially a form of money laundering”. And in a recent interview with the Fox Business Network, he announced: “Waste and fraud in rights expenditure – most federal expenses are rights – it is the great to eliminate.” Law expenses include Medicaid, Medicare and, of course, Social Security.

Musk described social security as “the largest Ponzi scheme for all time”, a direct accusation that supports the advantage is for the Chumps. It seems to lay the foundations for a large -scale assault on the most popular redistribution program in America with a line of thinking that society is, well, for dragees. Share, cooperate, promise the promise and help – this kind of seriousness is for losers, not leaders.

Musk claims to believe that many federal functions, in particular within agencies such as EPA, the Ministry of Education and even the FBI, wore the Freeloaders at each turn. In February, he demanded that federal employees send an email to Doge with an accounts of what they had accomplished the previous week, by displaying on X: “The reason why this is important is that a significant number of people who are supposed to work for the government do so little work that they do not check their email! He made the same affirmation concerning the deceased beneficiaries of Social Security, apparently based on a misunderstanding of the underlying coding, according to the reports of Cable.

Find out more: Why we hate being scammed

On the one hand, many daring claims seem so easily refuted that the whole campaign can be intended to implose. But I think and study the social sciences to feel scammed for almost two decades, and I know that the emotional efficiency of the rhetoric of the suction cup deforms our moral and political reasoning. Even when the accusations are not founded, even when the risks are low, the simple possibility of being a suction cup can be powerful enough to undermine a rational preference for cooperation.

It is too easy to convince people that compassion and integrity are illusory – that, as historian Anne Applebaum wrote in 2018, in Trump America, “morality is for losers”. Understanding the rhetorical power of the Warning of Americans that they are played for dragees, at a personal and visceral level, was part of the winning strategy of the 2016 Trump candidacy. It was held as the voice of reason which could see human asylum policies and international cooperation for what they were really: traps for reckless. Now the attraction of this rhetoric is put to a new test.

Psychologically, the fear of being a suction cup is a distinctly aversive feeling. Most people are so extremely attentive to the threat of feeling dupped that even the risks of minor scams can contaminate their decision -making, both in terms of daily financial and social decision -making, and also at the level of their fundamental values ​​and their deeper objectives. Confidence is risky, and there are many evidence of the social sciences that the risk of being linked aversion to particular risks. People will disappear from their way to even avoid the suggestion that they are about to play the madman. In a famous study of 2011, research participants showed that a promising start -up company was willing to play a lot when the risk of decrease of 5% was due to the overestimation of market demand, but to invest much less if the same risk of decrease of 5% was the small chance that the founders were “fraudsters”. The same risk, different psychological resonance and perhaps why the deployment by Trump and Musk of this type of language is so effective. Most of us retreated or retaliated, during the first suggestion that we could be enjoyed; As the threats go, the warning that you are a miller works.

Since he came into office last month, Trump went after a range of vulnerable goals. Whatever you think of the correctness or competence of the underlying missions, human evil has been real and widespread. Patients were refused to vital medical intervention abroad; The American government and university workers lose their jobs; The visas are revoked. Real people, with lives and obligations, suffer.

We could think, or hope, that Musk and Trump surfact their hands. The billionaires targeting workers, refugees and SSI beneficiaries – the optics should be terrible. But the incessant research of crooks from marginalized groups has a reliable psychological appeal. One of the fundamental ideas of Trump’s populism is that it seems to see how the rhetoric of the suction cup is linked to the anxiety of status. There is an additional humiliation, and therefore an additional threat, to be sucked by someone who, in your opinion, should be below you on the social scale, behind you in the line for promotion or priority seats. (“If they Can we put one on me, what does that do me? The thought goes.) The obsessive police of Trump of Who’s Sucker gave him a political weight with a population formed to be vigilant in the prospect of being scammed, even by the least plausible fraudsters like “Savy”.

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The line between assistance and the pawn is easily handled. All you need is waves on government waste and suddenly payment of your taxes means that you are a dupe; After a few big titles of around 150 years on Social Security, a modest retirement service looks like a reward for having cheated on the system.

But this whole framework is false. It is tempting to respond to Musk figures with direct refutation (no, DOGE has not saved $ 115 billion to taxpayers), but it is best to completely refuse the premise. We can support the effectiveness of the government and nevertheless insist that it is destructive to approach our most important cooperative companies with suspicions of rank. Living in a society requires confidence, and with this confidence comes a certain vulnerability. Lighting human suffering is the right objective for a government. And Social Security, a self -funded program that prevents millions of American poverty retirees each year, achieves a good property with remarkable efficiency.