Elon Musk Has A Plan To Keep Civilization From Collapsing. There's 1 Little Problem...

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13-07-2025

I raised my daughter on disability income, food stamps, and the generosity of friends and family who accepted home-cooked meals for helping me instead of cash. I didn't have a partner or a safety net. What I had was determination, exhaustion, and the constant fear of falling further behind.
So when I see billionaires like Elon Musk telling the world to have more kids or civilization will collapse, I want to scream.
It's not that people don't want families, it's that we're drowning in a system that makes them impossible to afford.
In the three years after my daughter was born, I lost five jobs — not because I wasn't capable or committed but because I couldn't always secure reliable child care. Eventually, a close friend stepped in and agreed to watch her for $30 a day and two home-cooked meals each week. That arrangement helped, but it came after we'd already lost everything. With no money and nowhere to go, my daughter and I moved into a spare room in my best friend's home. We slept in a bunk bed and tried to piece our lives back together.
Eventually, I did what so many parents do: I powered through. We moved south of Denver, and I landed a job that allowed us to climb out of the worst of it. For a while, it felt like we were finally moving forward. That is, until I was hit with devastating news about my health and had to go on Social Security Disability Insurance.
Suddenly, we were back to scraping by, this time on just $1,200 a month, with Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits and Medicaid keeping us afloat.
There were times I had to choose between paying for food and keeping the car insured. Other times, we couldn't afford rent and had to stay with family. But I always made sure my daughter had access to what she needed: three meals a day, an orchestra program, and a spot on the color guard. Those opportunities only happened because of public assistance and programs designed to catch people like us before we fell too far.
Without them, she wouldn't have had any of it. And I know we're not alone.
I've lived at the intersection of poverty, parenthood and disability. And that's not just a fork in the road — it's a carving knife of reality.
I've stood in food pantry lines, hoping there'd be a few items left. I've skipped meals to make sure my daughter had enough. I've felt the shame of judgment from strangers and even family — people who assume that if you need help, you're either lazy, irresponsible or both.
People think single parents live some glamorous sitcom life, but no one shows the scenes where you're crying over the stove because you can't afford gas and groceries in the same week. No one shows the trade-offs: the birthday gifts skipped, the medical care delayed, the emotional toll of trying to hold it all together when you're running on fumes.
And then here comes Elon Musk, telling us to have more kids.
It's easy to say from inside a mansion filled with nannies. It's easy to tell people to repopulate the world when you've never had to decide between medication and milk. But Musk's version of 'save civilization' sounds a lot like 'keep producing children so the labor force stays full,' without making a single change to support the people actually doing the raising.
We're raising kids in a world where survival costs more than it ever did. And some of us are trying to avoid dialysis while waiting for a kidney transplant; so no, we're not lining up to have baby number three just because a billionaire thinks it's our civic duty.
But Musk's fantasy doesn't exist in a vacuum. It echoes throughout Washington, D.C., where conservatives are gutting the very programs that kept my daughter and me alive.
Republicans just passed their so-called Big Beautiful Bill, which cut hundreds of billions of dollars from Medicaid and SNAP programs that millions of Americans, myself included, rely on to survive.
Now that it's passed, I could lose my eligibility for a kidney transplant. Without Medicaid to supplement my Medicare, I can't afford the out-of-pocket costs for necessary care and medications. I've already had to delay seeing my nephrologist because one safety net was ripped out from under me with only a month's notice. I can't imagine what will happen if the rest disappears.
And it's not just me. This will devastate seniors, babies, children, disabled folks, working families, and the communities that already carry too much. Hunger will increase. Local aid programs will definitely be overwhelmed. Hospitals will close. People will die. And what are Republicans getting in exchange? More Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents. More billionaires with bigger bank accounts. More cruelty disguised as fiscal responsibility.
But let's be honest, these lawmakers are not building a stronger economy. They're gutting the weak to appease the rich. They're treating human beings like budget line items. If you don't contribute enough to their campaign coffers, they don't care if you live or die.
This is not a broken system; it's a functioning machine of economic violence, operated by people who only punch down and call it policy.
So no, Elon and Republicans, we don't need more lectures about fertility. We need leadership that values and cares for the people already here!
If you really cared about families, you'd be fighting for universal child care, health care, housing and food security, not stripping them away. You'd be making sure parents had one less thing to fear, not 10 more.
Until then? Spare us the speeches. And keep your bootstraps. We can't even afford the damn boots.
J. Nova lives in Colorado, where she's spent decades navigating single parenthood, disability, and systems designed to fail. With a sharp sense of satire, she's finally putting her lived experience into words. This is her first published piece, but she's just getting started.