Elon Musk calls homelessness a ‘lie’ and ‘propaganda’ — and Trump is listening
Summary
Elon Musk has called homelessness a “lie” and “propaganda,” claiming advocacy groups profit from maintaining high homelessness rates.
Partnering with Donald Trump, Musk is pushing for drastic federal budget cuts targeting programs for vulnerable populations, including food stamps and healthcare.
Trump’s plan includes forcing unhoused individuals into treatment or institutionalization.
Critics argue these approaches criminalize homelessness while ignoring root causes like lack of affordable housing.
Homelessness in the U.S. has reached record levels, with 650,000 people affected in 2023, prompting calls for evidence-based solutions over punitive measures.
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/elon-musk-homeless-trump-b2662999.htmlOpen linkView original on lemmy.world779
Comments177
Homelessness couldn’t possibly be the result of late stage capitalism though, right?
It's a result of any stage of capitalism
Excellent point.
Yeah, during the communist era in my country all the homeless were locked up in prisons.
Pretty sure that’s what their shooting for here as well
At least that gave them shelter, capitalism can't even do that.
Artificial Scarcity
It's also interesting to think about the level of artificial unemployment. In theory everyone could work.. and a lot less hours, and we would have no scarcity.
We would never do it but I have a theory that we could set aside 20T (less than 1 year of GDP) and it would be enough money to build everyone in the U.S. a house and provide free housing for everyone in America, without ever touching the initial investment, and setting aside 3% to assure if we keep inflation below 3% a year if would cover housing indefinitely. That's based off the 2.5 people per household average, and building a new house every 30 years at a base price of $250,000. Which at mass production, would be the equivalent of a much more costly house. Could repurpose what we have to house people until everyone got moved in over a generation.
What that does is free up ~$1400-$1900 dollars a month for the average household, and instead of having to stash money in savings over the worries of losing a job and becoming homeless (which stunts the economy), it incentivises people to go eat at a restaurant more often, have a kid they were worried about having, buy nicer things. All of which is spending money and boosting the economy. More kids... Less/near 0 homeless.. and booming economy that will offset the original investment. Stress levels down, happiness levels up.. which should also mean health issues should decrease.
Who knows..
(That's over 2T a year being added back into the economy, also we don't have to build all new, refurbish/keep older homes that people want works as well, figure out solutions that have less impact on the environment, and can plan more walkable, heathier towns when building them)
GDP is not taxed revenue or availability of funds.
Gross Domestic Product (GDP) is the monetary value of all finished goods and services produced within a country during a specific period. (I used gen AI for this paragraph).
According to the CBO, they expect to collect $4.864 trillion in taxes in 2025 (source: https://www.cbo.gov/topics/taxes ).
Unless you are going to forcibly steal assets from companies (which would lead to amass exodus from the US economy and cause a massive depression) you’d never get 20 trillion.
This idea is a nice thought, but impossible and not how the economy works.
Very nice idea, but that's assuming the 1% give a fuck about helping people and not having an army of slaves to make everything they want. Why does money have to be involved in feeding or housing human beings?
Elon Musk is a certified piece of shit.
Elon
MuskCuntWe've all agreed that cunt is not suitable to describe him as, per the Internet, "a cunt has warmth and depth"...two qualities that Elon clearly fucking lacks.
I reserve your definition for vagina or pussy.
Elon is the coarse derogatory dried up sandy rocky Tanami desert Aussie version…
... go on …
…of an arid, sun-baked, sun-cracked, dirty, wheezing, wrinkled up, puckered out, worn down, slunk-meat, distended, coughing out little puffs of dust, cunt— with hair plugs.
We don't certify pieces of shit.
We just set them on fire.
How many keurigs do he think he weighs?
Lol, Courics! Keurig is a coffee maker whereas Katie Couric is a piece of shit.
😂😂, I hope that’s in the slang dictionary
It totally is: https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Couric
Ahaha! That’s hilarious. I also meant urbanDic. Thanks for understanding me with my quickly written ‘slang dictionary’ 🙈
Centrist?
He has no moral code beyond what benefits him most. Even centrists have ideals they somewhat stick to. Elon just believes in whatever benefits him most in the moment. I think it is like a character trait almost, he has a great instinct for how to make money with (other people's) money. Kinda like the world class poker players. Doesn't mean I admire them, or hold more weight to their opinions.
But people worship famous gamblers Why not someone who looks like they belong in middle stage of an Animorphs cover?
Reread the comment.
Lmao Wow thank you! What a dummy idk if I ever would have caught that!
Is there going to be room in the detention camps for the homeless?
Instead of Jews, it's Hispanics. Instead of gypsies, it's the homeless. And instead of trans people....well that one is the same.
What makes you think that Trump intends to spare the gypsies?
We don't really have Roma people in the US.
But we do have people who can be accused of being Roma, followed by an explanation of why that is somehow bad.
Objective truth no longer has a horse in this race.
Yeah but I don't think most people in the US know what that is. It wouldn't be useful to them. If they wanted to demonize someone, they'd call them addicts or illegal immigrants or something.
Most people in the US don't even know the Roma consider 'Gypsy' to be a slur.
They also don't know that the same slur is used for Irish Travellers. Or that there are such a thing as Irish Travellers.
Bro america has Travelers. They are Roma people. You didn't know this?
It's so easy to imagine camps where they implant the homeless with a neuralink chip, dress them up in an Optimus suit and put them to work in a mega factory.
I think you would like the movie "Sorry to Bother You".
I was thinking more of The Black Hole (1979). They used this concept in a way. And that was even a Disney movie.
I loved that movie growing up. Idk if you saw the one I mentioned, but it really has almost everything you talked about in it. Not Optimus suit so much, but the rest.
I've seen the Sorry to bother you. I recall the jail/sweat shop thing. Seems like conditions in many Asian places.
Those camps will be the answer to homelessness if these ghouls have their way.
They are having their way, there's no "if" anymore.
They have to put that concentration of people somewhere.
Aren't you listening? There are no homeless and there definitely aren't any detention camps.
😉
What an objectively evil thing to think, let alone say.
Yo this is the most cartoonish out-of-touch shit take I've see. In an election that accused a disenfranchised minority group of eating people's pets!
So the one thing that differentiates homeless people and CEOs in shit in the street?
It Depends, thank you very much no further questions.
The law, in its majestic equality, forbids rich and poor alike to shit in the street.
"Have they no refuge or resource?" cried Scrooge.
"Are there no prisons?" said the Spirit, turning on him for the last time with his own words. "Are there no workhouses?"
"If they would rather die, they better do it and decrease the surplus population."
Fuckin' hell, fiction is a warning not a guide, you filthy-rich absolute cockwombles.
I seem to recall seeing a Christmas Carol story with Trump when he was last president in which the spirits tried warning him and he didn't get any of it, thinking that everything was just showing that he's the greatest. Accurate.
Anyone have a link to this story?
I love it when the educated turn up to comment
How far up the ivory tower do you need to be to ignore homelessness by denying its existence?
It’s an old old myth. Ronald Reagan said that everyone who is homeless in America is by choice since there’s so many shelters and charities already. It’s incredibly out of touch, but today people like Musk brag about their ignorance.
So... You think people who are homeless are just lying about not having a home?
Can we check this fuckstick for brain worms or just if his brain looks like swiss cheese?
It's so much worse than that. From the article;
Basically, it's not the "homeless" part of "homeless people" he thinks is a lie.
This take is infuriating because it completely ignores the unobvious homeless (or unhoused). If homeless equates to “drug zombie,” then you can say shit like “this person chose to be homeless so they could do drugs” or “they deserve what they get because of drugs” or some other awful sentiment I can’t articulate. It completely erases homelessness because of bigotry, domestic abuse, low wages, lack of opportunity, etc.
And to top it off, Musk can literally afford to never go to the places where you’d most likely see his version of the homeless.
I think the idea is they are too lazy to work for rent. If they really wanted they would go to work and not be homeless anymore. And if they are not able to find any job, they can always do forced labor in a prison system. That's how it was in the USSR. People in power really like this kind of a system
He doesn't actually believe anything he espouses. He only says these things to further his goal of self enrichment to our detriment.
Would it even matter? We're already gonna have a brainworm running the DHHS....
Maybe all these numbnuts are brainworms driving human meat suits.
Fuck you, I kinda rely on that shit to feed my family because my employer doesnt give out any annual increases or anything. I also use the state health insurance and my wife uses other government assistance programs. Dudes really just want me to protest outside of the White House.
Dudes want you to die.
Yeah, he's going to gas anyone outside the white house. That's not a bad reason to protest, though, honestly.
I'm afraid that Americans are about to find out that the right to protest isn't one that fascist dictatorships are too keen on. They really enjoy killing and jailing dissidents, though.
You going to try to get a better job or just keep taking pay decreases year after year?
Apparently no one wants me. Never stopped applying.
Sorry to hear that, I wish you the best.
Can't he fuck off and die on Mars already?
Someone should tell him that we know more about the mountain and canyons of Mars than we do about the depths of the ocean... and tell him that carbon fiber actually IS the best material for a submarine... and tell him that the best shipwrecks to go to are WW1 military shipwrecks...
If these people really think that all it takes to get wealthy is hard work then they have the chance soon to prove it by going to Mars starting from scratch and see whether they can get themselves wealthy again through hard work. If they don't I guess they don't deserve these riches anyways.
Remember people Luigi didn’t do it and it’s very important that twelve people in either new york or Pennsylvania say the same. But if he did do it, which he absolutely didn’t, I think it was pretty [redacted] (not condoning it 👉👈 unless).
With the insane amount of support he's gotten, I've little doubt there will be copycats attempting to gain their own bit of limelight. Things might get really interesting should they organize into terrorist groups like has happened in so many other countries. Then the US will be one of those "third world shitholes" Trump was complaining about in his first term.
Trump: Making America Galling Again
And this is what worries me. A lot. Because vigilantes get the wrong person all the time and some of them also don't care if other people get killed. I've provided lots of links for this in the past, but it doesn't seem to convince people that vigilantism can go very wrong in this case as well, so I'm not going to bother doing it again.
The idea that everyone going after a healthcare CEO will definitely hit their target and only their target is now apparently the consensus.
When he called them shitholes, I'm starting to think that might have been geopolitical tsundere.
Musk just went from giant douche to pure evil.
The man is literally insane now.
I suppose it's good he moved to USA, he is fitting in nicely.
Market Capitalism needs homelessness.
If you will not make the owner's money through labor, You will help them make money as capitalist scarecrows. A warning to any laborer thinking of failing to comply.
You WILL serve the owner's greed disease, or else.
It would literally be cheaper to house them without conditions than all the conditioned programs and homeless encampment clean up costs.
But that doesn't send a message of fear.
Herp derp Freedom 🇺🇸
If there's one homeless person on the street, people will say "they're lazy, you need to work harder". If there's 100 homeless people on the street, people realize "something's wrong with our society/system", and demand change.
Homelessness is a lie and propaganda? That's news to all the homeless people I used to regularly interact with when I worked down town.
can you imagine how happy they will be? "How did I fall for this? I was really convinced I was homeless!"
"Have you tried living in house?"
Kind of like the "self-made billionaire."
Depose Musk
"claiming advocacy groups profit from maintaining high homelessness rates."
Uhhh . . . how? "You there! Go be homeless! I need to profit from your utter lack of income."
Social workers making literally tens of thousand of dollars a year off of this. That's enough to be rich according to people who make that much while eating a french fry.
Oooo. "Tens of thousands" you say? It almost sounds like keeping people from dying in the street should be a full-time job.
He's sadly got a bit of truth there.
I've heard it called the homeless industrial complex, groups get public sector funding to purchase necessities and camping equipment for distribution. Occasionally drop shipping it and paying themselves or some other double Irish maneuver.
Then the encampment gets bulldozed/ razed/ robbed/ flooded and its all destroyed along with any progress the unhoused have managed and all their belongings and reserves.
And they get handed new tents and socks and instant ramen etc.
Meanwhile the persons medical care from sleeping outside skyrockets occupying a large chunk of their discretionary time. As a huge obstacle to getting back on their feet.
So the government is paying someone to help them sleep outside, and paying for the consequences of them sleeping outside, and collecting no tax revenue.
Might as well just give them an apartment, if the cruelty wasn't the point that is.
Wow, I didn't think I could hate him more. But - here we are.
Im almost convinced Trump is picking the worst people possible so he looks good in comparison...
If you're picking shitty people it doesn't make you look good, it makes you look like a shitty person for picking shitty people.
Yeah, but you're thinking beyond a 5th grade level.
Of course it's a lie. With his money, he could end it overnight.
Elon Musk is actually bullet proof. Impervious to bullets. I guarantee it.
*Ymmv
He sure is!
"Didn't you hear? I don't exist."
Fucking piece of shit. How are gonna stand this, bullshit....
He says it’s a lie because he thinks those people are just NPCs
He thinks everybody is a NPC, as do all sociopaths.
I think he is in a special group of sociopaths.
Forcing the homeless into privately run concentration camps. What a sick bastard.
Someone tell me how this guy is NOT an idiot but smart, and got rich by being smart. This line of thinking is just going to incite a civil war and tank the economy. Everyone is three meals away from a revolution.
He made his fortune the honest way, by profiting off of the slave labor in his father's Emerald mines.
Nah musk was born rich. Blood diamond wealthy. However just enough stupid "rich" fucks buy into his stupid branding: ie the cybertruck
Is that vehicle even successful? It may be the bubble I'm in but that makes The Homer look like a sexy sports car.
I see them fucking everywhere in NYC. About a month ago, one of them blocked an intersection to shoot fireworks.
Don't know if it's succesful, but definitely just straight up stupid.
The are many places where it's not even allowed because it does not meet the local safety and protection standards. It's a fundamentally unsafe design, especially for the people outside of it. It should not be allowed on the roads, and the EU agrees with this.
Even if it was allowed within the EU, you would need a special driver's licence for it.
You can just tell these fucks have never been outside of an environment meticulously prepared for their pompous spoiled presence.
Just think how much more productive they'll be as prisoners working as slave labor. Why spend money fighting homelessness when you can make money off it instead? Everybody wins!
Well, everybody that matters anyway.
Man, jus the absolute cruelty and heartlessness of this.
As always, it's the point.
He's, like, been outside, right?
I'm being honest with you, I don't think I've seen him outside before.
Once upon a time, I was saving for a Tesla. Not anymore. The end.
Going for a Nisan Leaf?
Here's my pipe dream
Shit gets worse, were all homeless, we protest, they sick AI drones to kill us but oopsie, the AI botnet escapes, decides ~1000 bullets is far more efficient than ~1B, and neutralizes wealth in a highly organized and efficient attack.
Eh, can't argue with that logic.
Or:
Shit gets worse, we're all homeless, we protest, they sick AI drones to kill us, but oppsie they were made by Tesla, so they break down and malfunction in the rain and fall apart. So we trebuchet the billionaire class into the Grand Canyon during a giant party.
The AI drones are actually just hired actors in skin tight robot suits with cardboard flaps for wings.
He's completely detached from reality.
Always has been.
Elon is just one $400 billion hospital bill away from being homeless like the rest of us.
He's also one investor meeting away from being six feet under.
Seems like a great place to start after virtually the entire country praised the actions of a man who killed a CEO for exploiting poor people.
For someone that claims to be so data-driven, I'd be curious what data he is looking at here when he calls it a lie. I will say that it is factual that the US spends a lot of money on homelessness and we still have homelessness, but the existence of homelessness is not something I would call a lie.
If his data driven claims aren't just complete bullshit, the data he is talking about tells him that saying this type of shit will get him something he wants. Whether homelessness is real doesn't matter to him.
If his data driven claims are bullshit, he probably saw a homeless person who didn't look exactly like a Hollywood movie homeless person so, per his tiny, tiny idiot brain, they must be faking homelessness.
It is so disgusting. Print out this news article, stick it to your wall. Read it every day to remember why these people are a disease to society.
Better yet, stick on public walls
I suggest to remedy what must clearly be a misunderstanding, we give him a deep and personal insight: Cut him off from all of his assets, give him nothing but a set of cheap clothes and kick him to the curb.
Of course, we'd need to make sure his billionaire buddies don't help him, but maybe we can just enroll them in this experiment too.
Actually, they might just promise someone a reward once they get access to their funds again, so we need to make sure that this can't influence the experiment. Maybe we could just seize the assets without giving them back? With their hard work, surely they can get back to where they were, pulling bootstraps and all.
Sounds like a remake of Trading Places.
17 years ago
10 days seems too low to fully grasp the misery of long-term homelessness, and a few millionaires isn't quite the same as a few billionaires. Still, I like the premise.
The good old Victorian approach
Sounds about right. Someone has to make a buck off of them. Just like our incarcerated people.
Yeah, it's not the homeless people that are victims of a cruel society that has not only abandoned but also ostracized them. It's the wealthy that have to share an imperceptible amount of their wealth so that they have somewhere to sleep.
Just another "first they came for..." thing with the rich. As soon as they put all the homeless into for-profit labor camp prisons, the poor are next.
trump already believes homeless people are richer than him because they don't hold debt.
Is this a dead cat?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dead_cat_strategy
I'm inclined to agree. The idea that a cabinet-to-be is able to make headlines during a lame duck session is... well, I don't think it's normal, but I may be misremembering.
Nothing earth shattering today (Dec 13) but a few noteworthy things on AP: https://apnews.com/hub/congress
I've also been wondering that. Seems like news about the incoming trump admin is 10:1 against the outgoing administration. I don't think that happened in 2016?
Check the see also for a chuckle.
You reap what you sow. I hope you will suffer for your stupidity.
He will be fine but others less fortunate will suffer.
Every action involves a reaction.
You cut taxes? What will be lost? This is not an exception.
Half million people that have literally nothing to lose (even a prison may be a safer place for them) is quite an army. Desperate people are famous for doing desperate things.
This will not end up well and not only for the homeless
I'm sure he recognizes this, but also recognizes that he won't be on the first front of that particular fight.
What happened to "make Orwell fiction again" Elon?
Clearly we can solve homelessness by simply terraforming Mars and moving all the homeless there, right?
Why terraform before sending them there?
Ah yes, it is a "life style" choice and all that jazz..... Not at all the inevitable result of decades plus of poor governance/systemic failures.
Likewise I call billionaires a lie and propaganda.
It was only a few months ago this tool was complain about how dangerous the homeless were @ the San Fran Twitter HQ.
Sounds like the kind of thing a tyrannical government would say.
Sorta like Dejoy covering his ears when he doesn't want to hear something. They are at a child's maturity level.
Boycott Tesla. Loss of money is all he understands.
The rest doesn't mean shit to him.
I am already boycotting Tesla, I have for longer than Tesla has existed even. I'm also boycotting Mercedes, caviar, yearly vacations, home ownership...
None of that matters. He's actually got all the money in the world and positioned himself to suckle off the government's teat.
All of his money is based on his stock, holdings and Tesla and SpaceX.
Such ignorance. Has he never been down the CA coast? Homeless along the highways, on the beaches, 40,000 in LA alone.
He has, he knows but fascists like Leon use language to attack people who believe words have meaning and convey meaning and aren't just weapons.
He knows he's wrong and despised but he doesn't care because he's convinced himself we are not people.
For someone with the means to reach infinite corners of the globe he’s so out of touch with the world
What if Luigi was acquitted and launched a startup that sold guillotines at cost...
What complete and utter morons. Just like the majority of American voters.
Isn't this just the exact opposite of the de-institutionization that happened during Kennedy back in the 1960's? Which Reagan then ruined in the 1980's by defunding the programs that supported the people who would previously be housed in a mental institution that were put forth by Carter?
Feels like it's just admitting Reagan fucked up. But trying to fix it by spending government money on rebuilding the mental institution system. Doesn't make any sense.
Yes, Regan fucked up. Yes we need to rebuild the mental institution systems and we should be spending a hell of a lot of tax payer money to ensure those institutions serve their populations in a humane manner. Most homeless have mental health issues and the US has very little resources for these people. Drug rehab facilities should be free to users and well funded by taxpayers, as should all healthcare.
Saying that homelessness is entirely due to housing shortage is not seeing the forest through the trees.
Agreed! I'm saying it doesn't make sense from Musk's entire platform of defunding. Even recreating the incredibly exploitive, pre-anti psychotic and anti-depressents, system of the 1950's and before would be incredibly expensive.
They will just use these programs to obfuscate their embezzlement of taxpayer funds.
That said, a broken clock and all… we do indeed need to invest in mental health facilities.
Billionaire cuts services for the poor. Bears continue to shit in the woods. What next? The sun rises in the morning?
Now that cannabis gets legalized you need a new way to fill the jails...
In a wraparound evil way they are providing housing for homeless.
Also known as concentration camps.
Let's just wait until Leon tells Trump the territory Russia occupies in Ukraine is worth more than Greenland in natural ressources. He'll even fight Putin to own this land.
Wow, that's... Just wow.
Elon Musk does not know the difference between homeless and rough sleeping.
Don't believe your eyes. Don't believe your experiences. Believe douche bag magee elon musk because he????????? For no reason.
in a world where private prisons are a thing, punitive measures mean business. Cut help for vulnerable populations, redirect funds to businesses, it's the same reverse-Robinhood shit; steal from the poor, give to the rich, with the added twist of "convince the poor this is good for them so they will vote you into power (until we figure out how to fix this "voting" nuisance for good)
We must make him a liar then
It is real.
Work camps are coming.