Elon Musk: Government Retirement System Still Runs on 1950s Paper Process

Elon Musk: We discovered that the government retirement process is still done by paper, like in the 1950s.

“The retirement process is all by paper, literally, with people carrying paper in Manila envelopes into this gigantic mine. The reason we discovered it was we were saying, like, well, let's encourage voluntary retirement. They said, well, the most they could do is 8,000 a month. And even under normal circumstances, it can take six to nine months just to have your time and paperwork processed. And they often get the calculations wrong.

So we're like, well, why would it take so long to retire? They say it's because of the mine. We're like, what do you mean, a mine? What does a mine have to do with retiring?

And that's where we discovered that all the retirement stuff is still done by paper in a process that looks identical to what occurred in the 1950s. If we took a snapshot of the mine when it first started in the 50s to today, it looks the same.”

DOGE interview on Fox News, March 27, 2025