Elon Musk claims that his Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) has uncovered "the biggest fraud in history" within the Social Security Administration: Payments to millions of Americans who have likely been dead for a long time.
That claim seems to be based on a faulty understanding of Social Security data on Musk's part. More to the point: Social Security's fiscal problems aren't the result of fraudulent payments to people who are already dead. It is not benefits for the dead, but rather payments to the living that are driving the program toward insolvency.
"According to the Social Security database, these are the numbers of people in each age bucket with the death field set to FALSE," Musk posted to X earlier this week, along with a chart that purports to show that millions of people over age 100 are still in the program's database. "Maybe Twilight is real and there are a lot of vampires collecting Social Security," Musk suggested.
