Elon Musk's 150 y/o Social Security Claim: Fact or COBOL Fiction?

[mister_coffee]

According to the SSA's own internal reporting the number of centenarians receiving social security benefits is around 90,000. Which aligns well with demographic data estimating there are around 100,000 centenarians living in the United States.

https://www.newsnationnow.com/business/ ... 20payments.

[PAL]

Funeral Director here: People who pass away don’t receive social security checks once the agency has been notified. We fill out a form (SSA-721) and fax it directly to social security.
Elon Musk is lying to you.

[pasayten]

Elon Musk's Social Security Claim: Fact or COBOL Fiction?

A discussion emerged following Elon Musk's claim that individuals over 150 years old are collecting Social Security, attributing this to a COBOL programming error where missing dates default to 1875. The debate clarified that while COBOL itself does not inherently default to 1875, some government applications might use this date as a placeholder for unknown dates. The conversation revealed broader issues with legacy system data management, particularly questioning the logic behind issuing Social Security payments without proper age verification. The consensus was that Musk's claim might reflect a misunderstanding or exaggeration of how date defaults function in specific COBOL applications, rather than a standard feature of the language.