Elon is coming for social security
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Anonymous
They would first have to figure out the actual death dates for each of these people. Otherwise the data in the table would just be made up. |
Anonymous
| Glad to hear it. Cut the fat. |
Anonymous
First, Retirement isn’t welfare. It’s an entitlement you paid for by working. And if you want want a zero percent error rate, you can’t cut SSA staffing and the budget below 1980s levels while we deal with baby boomers retiring. It takes time, manpower and decent software— not running on on COBOL— to check on tens of millions of people. Some of our databases haven’t been updated with new software in 40+ years. That’s a Congress problem. We can’t by software if they don’t appropriate the funds. Plus, this isn’t just a SSA issue. Treasury is also responsible for gathering this data. SSA tries to maintain a 1% error rate. And most years does. I think last year was about .75%. And SSA does a decent job recovering overpayments and has toughened up on getting overpayments back the last couple of years. But, you can’t get blood from a stone. And we are so understaffed we were not FORK eligible and are not or VERA eligible (unlike, say, nuclear weapons monitors and ATC). You want 0% to be 1%— staff us up. And realize that it costs more in manpower to ferret out the .75%— sending people to nursing homes to verify that 105 years are still alive— than it does to overpay. The price of perfect is multiples of the price or really good. Also, SSA s systems are strange, incredibly outdated, pull this data from multiple places and sometimes use unknown fields and use data from multiple databases. As an example, if an exact birthday is not known (born at home 80 years ago) the number is set to 150 years ago (in this case 1875). TL; DR— the data isn’t saying what Elon thinks it is. Which is why you don’t parachute. 20 year olds with no background in our programs in to run a couple queries and play gotcha. https://www.politifact.com/article/2025/feb/17/are-150-year-old-americans-receiving-social-securi/ |
Anonymous
+200000 |
Anonymous
SSA audits pure overpayments at less than 1%— most recently .75%. 1/3 to 1/2 of overpayments are clawed back. The rest went to people with zero assets, but we will eventually garnish their RSI checks. |
Anonymous
What's gonna get cut is yours and your parents benefits that you pay for, to give tax breaks to Elon and Trump. Simple as that. This is what they are setting up for. Enjoy! |
Anonymous
| Friends on various social.media platforma are already reporting decreases in their Social security and SSDI payments. |
Anonymous
People who work with SSA databases also know that some are outdated. By about 40 years. Yes, we need a more modern system that isn’t held together by chewing gum and paper straws. But Congress won’t appropriate the funds to update SSA systems. You think Mr. “Cut 80%” is going to recommend funding to update SSA systems? Me neither— so Elmo needs to learn COBOL and take the time to learn SSAs systems before popping off. And learning complex outdated systems takes a lot of time. |
Anonymous
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Musk is full of $hit! In order to bury someone a death certificate is mandatory in every state. Funeral homes will.do nothing without a death certificate. Funeral homes also notify the SSA when someone dies so they can receive the one time death benefit. Financial institutions may also report deaths Veterans Administration may also report deaths to the SSA. States report deaths to the Social Security Administration (SSA) through vital records offices. The SSA uses this information to run its programs and prevent improper payments. Again musk is full of $hit! |
Anonymous
The problem is that you can’t just write a script to fix code, you need to validate millions of pieces of underlying data, so you don’t mark Nana as dead when she is not. |
Anonymous
Incorrect. Did you read the OIG report people keep linking to? |
Anonymous
it said only 2% of people had earnings history or were getting payments. So the percentage getting payments is actually much lower than this because most of this 2% is actually illegal immigrants using a dead persons social security number and paying social security taxes. A much smaller portion is people over 100 getting benefits. Most of these people are paying taxes, but do not actually get any benefit. |
Anonymous
Yes, this would involved human verification for millions records. Easily thousands of employees if you want to do this over a short-time period. |
Anonymous
You willing to pay for all the extra manpower to get there? This has been audited. Below 1%, you spend significantly more money for each correction than you do on improper payments. SSA has enough of a staffing crisis that they could not FORK and most cannot VERA. I was taken off a case load with a year backlog to help on a caseload with an 18 month backlog. We are at our lowest staffing in 50 years— while dealing with Boomers. We. Need. More. Staff. SSA employees move over to this data set (and to be clear, most of the 100+ aren’t getting RSI) and more people die waiting for disability (which can come with the Medicaid they need to treat the disability). Elmo is not in a giving more staff mood. |
Anonymous
No. They said fix it and SSA said “with what staff and what funding?” Especially since the vast majority of these numbers are functionally dead. We aren’t cutting checks for them. |