Elon Musk: The national debt is actually double what people think it is because of our future obligations.

“The government's one big pyramid scheme. Social Security is the biggest Ponzi scheme of all time. People pay into Social Security and the money goes out of Social Security immediately. But the obligation for Social Security is your entire retirement career.

If you look at the future obligations of Social Security, it far exceeds the tax revenue. Far. There's our present day debt, but then there's our future obligations. So when you look at the future obligations of Social Security, the actual national debt is like double what people think it is because of the future obligations.

Basically, people are living way longer than expected and there are fewer babies being born. So you have more people who are retired that live for a long time and get retirement payments. However bad the financial situation is right now for the federal government, it will be much worse in the future. At the risk of being a buzzkill here. Did you see? So, we better fix what we've got right now, because if it's bad now, it's going to be much worse in the future.”

The Joe Rogan Experience, February 28, 2025