Stop and think.

Social Security is one of the FEW parts of government that works well. Medicare also works well, entirely unlike most private “health” “insurers”.

THEREFORE Elon is trying to destroy it. He hates things that function, especially if they’re not pumping all of their money into his pocket.

He claims that his “auditors” have found “tens of millions” of dead people still getting benefits.

STOP AND THINK.

This type of error is bound to happen in a huge system. But TENS OF MILLIONS of payments are impossible. Where is the money going? Most SS is now directly deposited in checking accounts. If TENS OF MILLIONS of inactive accounts were receiving payments every month, BANKS WOULD KNOW. Banks know when somebody dies, and transfer the money to the named beneficiary of the account, or through the executor of the will. Banks are damn good at spotting errors. Banks have REAL auditors and REAL algorithms. Banks have Cobol.

Speaking of REAL auditors, why aren’t the big auditing firms complaining about Elon’s fraudulent misuse of the NAME? REAL auditors don’t throw around wild impossible numbers in public. They report the error to the company being audited, and if they find an obvious illegality they notify the authorities.

Metrology: Checking against your own experience is the best way to determine whether media or politicians are trustworthy. If the source is provably wrong EVERY time you can check it, you’re entitled to disbelieve the rest of its claims. I was a bookkeeper in the ’70s and I’m on SS now. I know the innate ethics of accounting, and I know how SS works. I don’t know the inner workings of war or politics, so I’m easily fooled in those areas.

Later: Some people are saying that the alleged 150-year-old recipients result from the Y2K problem with Cobol. First, it’s not a problem with Cobol or the old mainframes. Both could handle big numbers. It was a problem with sloppy programming. Second, all Y2K problems that affected real money or real outputs were fixed in 1999. (Again I speak from experience.) Third, even if Elon isn’t totally lying and his minions found one old database containing these errors, the errors are OBVIOUSLY not affecting actual payments. Bureaucracies churn out lots of reports for various purposes. Reports don’t control payments.