02/12/2025

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2025/02/11/elon_musk_were_processing_social_security_on_paper_inside_a_mineshaft_how_about_anything_but_ttat.html

ttps://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2025/02/11/elon_musk_were_processing_social_security_on_paper_inside_a_mineshaft_how_about_anything_but_ttat.html

Posted By Tim Hains
On Date February 11, 2025

Elon Musk spoke about one way to reform the federal bureaucracy during an Oval Office event with President Trump on Tuesday: getting rid of the OPM’s Iron Mountain data center.

“We were told the most number of people that could retire [from the federal government] possibly in a month is 10,000,” Musk said. “We’re like, well, why is that?”

“Well, because all the retirement paperwork is manual on paper. It’s manually calculated. They’re written down on a piece of paper, then it goes down a mine… Yeah, there’s a limestone mine where we store all the retirement paperwork.”

“You know what? Instead of working in a mineshaft, carrying manila envelopes to boxes in a mine, you could do practically anything else, and you would add to the goods and services of the United States in a more useful way.”

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ELON MUSK: So, you know, there are crazy things like just a cursory examination of Social Security, and we’ve got people in there that are 150 years old now. Do you know anyone who’s 150? I don’t. They should be in the Guinness Book of World Records. They’re missing out.

That’s a case where, like, I think they’re probably dead. It’s my guess. Or they should be very famous — one of the two.

And then there are a whole bunch of Social Security payments where there’s no identifiable information. Why is there no identifying information? Obviously, we want to make sure that people who deserve to receive Social Security do receive it, and that they receive it quickly and accurately.

I’ll tell you another crazy thing. So, you know, one of the things is like we are trying to sort of rightsize the federal bureaucracy — just make sure that obviously there needs to be a lot of people working for the federal government, but not as many as currently.

So we’re saying, “Well, okay, if people can retire with full benefits and everything, that would be good. They can retire, get their retirement payments, everything.”

And then we were told—this is actually, I think, a great anecdote—because we were told, “No, the most number of people that could retire possibly in a month is 10,000.”

We’re like, “Well, why? Why is that?”

“Well, because all the retirement paperwork is manual on paper. It’s manually calculated. They’re written down on a piece of paper, then it goes down a mine.”

And I’m like, “What do you mean a mine?”

Like, “Yeah, there’s a limestone mine where we store all the retirement paperwork.”

And you look at a picture of this mine—we’ll post some pictures afterwards—and this mine looks like something out of the ’50s because it was started in 1955. So it looks like it’s a time warp.

And then the speed—the limiting factor is the speed at which the mine shaft elevator can move—determines how many people can retire from the federal government. And the elevator breaks down sometimes. And then you can’t—nobody can retire.

Doesn’t that sound crazy?

There’s like a thousand people that work on this.

So I think if we can take those people and say, “You know what? Instead of working in a mineshaft, carrying manila envelopes to boxes in a mine, you could do practically anything else, and you would add to the goods and services of the United States in a more useful way.”

So anyway, I think, you know, that’s an example.

At a high level, if you say, “How do we increase prosperity?”—we get people to shift from roles that are low to negative productivity to high productivity roles. And so you increase the total output of goods and services, which means that there is a higher standard of living available for everyone. That’s the actual goal.

****

It looks like the government is still living in the stone age.

kommonsentsjane