Elon Musk repeatedly said that his so -called mission of the Department of Government (Doge) had found a large authorities fraud when he stated that the 150 years had been claiming advantages for social safety.
But Musk didn’t present proof in assist of his statements and the specialists rapidly careworn that that is most certainly solely a strangeness of the tenth anniversary of the a long time that’s the foundation of the federal government’s fee programs.
Musk made the statements for the primary time throughout his Press conference of the oval office Last week, when he stated {that a} “floor examination of social safety and we had people who find themselves 150 years previous. Now, you understand somebody who has 150? I do not know. They needs to be within the Guinness of the world data … so it is a in case I believe they in all probability died. “
Although no assessments had been produced in assist of this assertion, it was collected by the best -wing commentators on-line, primarily on Musk’s X platform, in addition to being reported Credibly from the Pro-Trump media.
Computer programmers rapidly said that the determine of 150 was not a proof of fraud, however moderately the results of a wierd strangeness of the system of advantages of the administration of social safety, which was largely written in Cobol, a language 60 -year -old programming which is subjected to SSA databases in addition to the programs of many different US authorities companies.
Cobol is never used at present and, as such, the group of younger Musk engineers is probably not conversant in it.
Since Cobol doesn’t have a kind of date, some implementations are primarily based on a system for which all of the dates are Coded on a point of reference. The mostly used is May 20, 1875Since this was the date of a global convention to determine commonplace held in Paris, often called “Convention du Mère”.
These programs are defaulting the reference level when a date of beginning is lacking or incomplete, which implies that all these objects in 2025 would present an age of 150.
This is only a potential rationalization for what Doge presumably discovered. Musk might additionally merely search for the SSA web site, which explains that from September 2015 the company robotically interrupted the funds of the providers When someone reaches the age of 115.
However, Musk was doubled on Monday morning, publishing a screenshot of what he claims had been figures from the “social safety database” to X, writing that “the variety of individuals in every bucket with the loss of life camp placed on false!”
The figures advised that over 10 million individuals over the age of 120 had been accumulating advantages.
“Maybe Twilight is actual and there are numerous vampires that accumulate social safety,” Musk wrote.
The Musk database took the screenshot of just about 400 million individuals, who’s greater than 5 instances the quantity of people that obtain advantages in 2024, in keeping with the The SSA website. It can be considerably greater than your complete American inhabitants.
The undeniable fact that the social safety system incorporates tens of millions of voices of people that have died was in all probability distinguished from a possible error attributable to Cobol, and never additionally by information. A report written by the inspector general of the SSA in 2023 He found that 98 % of these of age equal to or over 100 years in social safety databases doesn’t profit. The report added that the database wouldn’t be up to date as a result of it will value an excessive amount of cash to do it.
