Dead People

In a Washington remake of the movie, The Sixth Sense, Elon Musk is playing the part of Haley Joel Osment when he says, “I see dead people.”  In fact, he claims to have seen tens of millions of dead people who are receiving Social Security checks.  Had he done his homework before opening his Oval Orifice in the Oval Office he might have found some real facts.  Instead he decided to use his other orifice to pull out some wild numbers.

Some facts:

The United States has an estimated 101,000 people who are over 100 years of age.  Social Security had around 89,000 retirees receiving benefits in the 99+ bracket as of December 2024.  The Social Security Administration has issued over 500 million SS numbers over the years and their database contains millions in this database who were born more than a century ago.

Last year the SSA paid benefits to around 68 million.  Instead of looking at those collecting benefits, Musk and company were looking at the “Numident” that has info on every person who has ever been registered since the first check was issued on January 31, 1940.  That check was paid to Ida May Fuller in Ludlow, Vermont in the amount of $22.54.

In 2023, when Musk was just building Tesla’s and blowing up rockets, the SS agency’s inspector general found 19 million people over 100 without a recorded death.  Almost none of whom were collecting benefits.  It wasn’t worth cleaning up the database for these people as many died before the advent of electronic records.  The IG decided this was an “issue” and not a problem because these people weren’t collecting benefits.