The Elon Musk train goes off the rails
The Social Security Administration continues to smack down Elon Musk’s lies. One of Musk’s biggest lies was that “millions of dead people” are receiving Social Security benefits. According to SSA, the agency receives more than three million death notices per year. Back in February, Musk posted on X: “Having tens of millions of people marked in Social Security as ‘ALIVE’ when they are definitely dead is a HUGE problem.” The problem is that Musk’s alleged problem doesn’t exist. SSA’s evidence showed that errors encountered by the agency involved living beneficiaries who had been marked deceased, not, as Musk claimed, millions of dead receiving benefits. Leave it to Musk. No wonder he and Trump got along so well. In its statement, the SSA wrote: “Instances when a person is erroneously reported as deceased to Social Security can be devastating to the individual, spouse, and dependent children.” The Seattle Times recently reported such an occurrence involving Ned Johnson, who was erroneously listed as “dead.” They stopped his benefits and removed $5,201 from his bank account. Fortunately for Mr. Johnson, he was not living solely on his SSA benefits or his family would have been, as the SSA said, devastated. The SSA then went on to debunk other misinformation from Elon Musk.
There are 67 million Americans currently receiving SSA benefits. Only 0.1% of them are over 100. SSA uses an automated system to terminate benefits for anyone over 115 years old, which debunks Musk’s claim that he found people “150 years old” who are receiving benefits. Just like Donald Trump, Musk says things for shock value. It doesn’t matter to him that he is giving erroneous information that upsets people, and it doesn’t help matters when the “president” of the United States repeats this misinformation into the public realm. Back in February when Musk was at his height of misinformation, Trump spoke to reporters and claimed: “Now, the big thing is, how many of these people got paid? Where are they getting paid? How many of them are getting paid Social Security, because that’s-if that’s the case, it’s massive fraud.” We can clearly see the biggest case of fraud in this country, and it sits in the Oval Office, surrounded by incompetent people like Elon Musk. Money apparently cannot buy class or truth.
Yes, SSA has made some improper payments over the years, but they amount to 1% of all payments. Furthermore, they are overpayments to living beneficiaries, not payments made to dead people. According to the 2024 inspector general’s report, from 2015 to 2022, the SSA made $71.8 billion in improper payments. When you consider that they issue trillions of dollars in benefits per year, this is a relatively small number of mistakes. You cannot tell me that rich businessmen like Musk don’t make mistakes. He may be rich, but he’s not very bright and he lies. He likely lies about his own mistakes to keep from coming clean.
DOGE has shown time and again that it is a failed experiment, but so is the man who calls himself a “president.” People who voted for him are as delusional as he is, and their delusions are harming everyone.
Shirley is a former entertainment writer and has worked in the legal field for over 25 years