It sounds like a joke, but the data comes from the Social Security, the state pension insurance of the United States. An inquiry as part of the DOGE work revealed a very peculiar age structure of recipients of state pension payments, which Musk immediately published:
“According to the Social Security data, this is the number of people in each age group where the field for ‘dead’ is marked as ‘false’! Maybe Twilight is real and there are a lot of vampires receiving state pension.”
Of course, a recipient who is supposed to be between 360 and 369 years old would be particularly exciting, but the number of 3.6 million recipients in the age range of 110 to 119 years also sounds more than unlikely. A Republican representative responded to Musk’s post, saying that at least those over 120 should have their payments suspended until they can prove they are still alive.
Of course, this number is not a proof that the money actually flowed. However, this result is at least a proof of gross sloppiness, as the oldest data in the pension insurance, which was founded by Franklin D. Roosevelt 90 years ago, should not be available at all. And in a computer-managed database, there should be no records of cases that were already closed before the introduction of computers.
The data for the year 2023 also lists a total of 394 million names, although the official population of the United States was 334.9 million. Musk: “This could be the biggest fraud in history.”
He might be right if indeed behind each false data entry there is a payment hidden. The average monthly state pension payment is $1,783.55. If one only takes the 59.1 million data entries that exceed the population, this would amount to $1,264 billion per year, or $105.4 billion per month, flowing to ghosts.