So $150m+ month is paid to 89k people over 99. That's not impossibly old. US census data seems to show more than that number of people 99+ alive in the US, though I couldn't find an exact number using google.
Elon Musk drops this "bombshell" that millions of people too old to be alive are listed in the SS database. We all happen to know that SS pays out billions of dollars every month. The link is not explicit but implied. You personally fell for the same implication when reading the NYpost article, confusing monies paid out to people listed, with the fact that fake people are listed.
Don't get me wrong, fraud and waste exist in every program at every level of government, and it's nice that someone is finally clearing house.
1. I agree there certainly can be that many people 99+ of age. I shouldn't have focused on that. My main issue with his tweet is his frustration at Musk showing the possibility of fraud for any entitlement, him misinterpreting it as a declaration of fraud for social security payments, and even then... doing nothing to disprove it (there is certainly rampant fraud in all those buckets, not just the 99+ btw)
2. Reminder that simply being old doesn't make you eligible for ss, don't ignore the criteria that you have to actually work and earn credits
3. Also you are focused on social security checks, when that is just one entitlement that is dependent on the social security database. The gov uses SS numbers for everything
4. Some of the people considered alive are 360+ years old, which means that they were most certainly dead in 1936 when social security numbers were first created. So are some people in the database just.. made up? Think of the ramifications of this
