Re: Trump's claims about 100+ yr olds scamming social security

[robert <http://dummy.us.eu.org/robert>]

Well, the Musk rats are coders.  Why don't they just fix the COBOL code?

 > From: Noelle <noelle>
 > Date: Wed, 5 Mar 2025 06:59:28 -0800 (PST)
 >
 > “We're also identifying shocking levels of incompetence and probable 
 > fraud in the Social Security program for our seniors, and that our 
 > seniors and people that we love rely on. Believe it or not, 
 > government databases list 4.7 million Social Security members from 
 > people aged 100 to 109 years old. It lists 3.6 million people from 
 > ages 110 to 119. I don't know any of them. I know some people that 
 > are rather elderly, but not quite. 3.47 million people from ages 120 
 > to 129, 3.9 million people from ages 130 to 139, 3.5 million people 
 > from ages 140 to 149. …”
 > 
 > This is false. Trump’s riff continued until he got to the end —“one 
 > person between the age of 240 and 249 and one person listed at 360 
 > years of age.” His numbers roughly mirrored figures posted on social 
 > media by billionaire Elon Musk, who is slashing government programs 
 > with a shock team of assistants that has been dubbed the Department 
 > of Government Efficiency.
 > 
 > As The Washington Post has reported, this is largely a coding issue. 
 > The Social Security Administration maintains its databases using 
 > COBOL, a nearly 70-year-old computer programming language that 
 > doesn’t have a standardized way to store and work with dates. Often 
 > a default date is chosen, most commonly May 20, 1875, if no birth 
 > date is known.
 > 
 > As is often the case with Trump’s claims, there is an existing 
 > government report that would have cleared up matters.
 > 
 > A 2023 report from the Social Security Administration’s inspector 
 > general found that virtually every beneficiary who lacked a birth 
 > date had died. Of the 18.9 million people with Social Security 
 > numbers born in 1920 or earlier with no record of their deaths, the 
 > report said “approximately 18.4 million (98 percent) number holders 
 > are not currently receiving SSA payments and have not had earnings 
 > reported to SSA in the past 50 years.”