- We have this incredibly bloated financial sector.
- It's a phony crisis that it
does. They don't have to be cut.
- We know how to get out of a great depression.
We spend money. If
we take a look at the typical worker,
they're not doing fine.
- Hi, I'm Dean Baker.
I'm your host for the podcast, mostly Economics.
Today we have on our show Nancy Altman, who's the president
of Social Security Works,
and someone who I could say has been working on social
security issues even longer than I have.
Uh, Nancy's work goes back, uh, many, many years, uh, back
to the Greenspan Commission in 1982, which was the last, uh,
major overhaul of social security.
So when it comes to knowing social security, I think very,
very few people can claim greater authority to Nancy.
So I'm very happy to have Nancy on the show here.
- Thank you so much for having me, Dean.
- Well, we have a lot to talk about today
and, you know, which is both good and bad.
'cause, uh, you and I both feel the same.
Social security's a great program,
and, uh, unfortunately it's threatened today
and perhaps a way it never been before.
But to start with, uh, maybe we could just outline,
you know, what you see as the major features
of Social Security and why,
why it's such an important program.
- Social Security is really essential for an, um,
a society where people get their, they, their, um,
essentials through work where everyone works
and you need work.
There's no uniform, basic income or anything like that,
because what social security is,
it's insurance against the loss of wages.
As I say, as long as you, uh, need your salary
or wages to pay for your housing and your food
and your clothing and so forth,
you need insurance against their loss.
You can lose that income if you, um,
die leaving young children
who are dependent on those benefits.
You can lose that income if you become so disabled
that you cannot support yourself through work.
Or if you have the good fortune to live to very old age,
you lose your income if you retire.
Social security ensures wages in those three categories.
In addition, you can lose your wages
if you become unemployed.
And we don't think of unemployment insurance
as social security,
but it was part of the Social Security Act of 1935.
And it's the same concept.
It's insurance against the loss of wages.
And Nina, if I can say one more thing, it is extremely,
it is strikingly superior
to its private sector counterparts.
It's portable from job to job. It's extremely secure.
Um, the it's plan sponsor is the federal government,
which is not going out of business and, uh, can, can tax
and borrow funds and so forth.
So it's strikingly superior.
It's one shortcoming is that its benefits are too low.
- It's, you know, again, you know this of course very well.
I mean, it's just remarkable what an amazing success story
Social Security has been.
So, you know, president Roosevelt support starts
this during the depression.
And at that time to be elderly pretty much meant to be old.
I mean, you're dependent on your family,
so if your family could support you, you're okay.
But a lot of families, particularly during the Depression,
could support their, their aging parents
and the poverty rates were
through the roof for, for the elderly.
And today, I, I haven't looked at the latest numbers,
but the poverty rate for people over 65, some around 10%,
it's actually a little bit lower than
for the rest of the population.
So that, that's just an amazing success story there.
And as you mentioned, I think a lot of people forget that,
uh, social security also, uh,
protects people against disability.
So you, uh, somewhere around 10,
12 million people get disability from Social Security
and then also, um, for children of, sort of,
of workers that die young.
And, uh, again, it's almost comical.
Elon Musk was very upset
that you had four year olds getting social security.
The rest of us were going, yeah, that's
what happens when you,
unfortunately they had a parent that died young.
That's one of the benefits of social security.
But you know, he apparently thought he'd found
new evidence of fraud. So yeah,
- Exactly.
It should just shows his ignorance of the program
and the, as important as Social Security is
as an anti-poverty program, and it is extremely effective.
In fact, when social security was enacted,
every statement New Mexico had poor houses.
And then those poor houses were people
who normally had worked their entire lives,
but in old age did not have family.
You could support them and literally went to the poor house.
But the difference between that
and means tested programs is that insurance is to,
means tested programs are to alleviate poverty,
but what insurance is it prevents you from
falling into poverty.
So it's, it really is a extremely,
Franklin Roosevelt and his colleagues really knew
what they were doing when they designed
and created this program.
- Yeah, no, it's an incredibly important point that,
you know, I think is often underappreciated.
Well, probably not underappreciate, so
unless it's deliberately distorted.
So when people talk about social security as,
as an entitlement, as a benefit, it is,
but the point is people paid for it.
So it's just like no one would think that if,
if I was paying for, for insurance
and my house burned down, that somehow that was a handout.
I mean, I, I paid for the insurance.
That's, that's what social
- Security is, so you didn't get it right.
- Yeah, so, so the the attacks on it are just, you know,
again, so I I I don't know
how much it's confusion versus deliberate misrepresentation
because obviously if your intent is to cut
or destroy the program,
it gets less support if you could portray it
as a handout rather than, no,
this is the insurance program workers
paid into it their whole lives.
And yeah, they have every right in the world
to expect the benefit for it.
- And that's, that is I think, part
of the undermining of social security.
And, and it's really had, I think,
an impact on disability benefits.
And that is somehow to make people feel they shouldn't
take those benefits.
That somehow there's something wrong
with those programs when actually it's
deferred compensation.
You know, people don't feel funny about
taking their salaries.
So that's their current cash compensation.
They, you know, if they get a, um, retirement through, uh,
their employer, there's, you know, you're
of course you're gonna get that,
that's part of your compensation.
And social security is the same thing.
In fact, until a few decades ago,
employers would claim Social Security as a benefit that they
provided their workers because they do match the worker
contribution dollar for dollar.
But we don't see that anymore.
But it worker, you know, employers would be smart
to take credit for it and to, um, push to improve it.
- You have one more point about social security,
which obviously you know very well, Nancy, that you know,
the, the benefit structure's very progressive,
and that's, again, quite explicit.
So that, you know,
it's based on your average earnings over most
of your working life, your best 35 years.
And for a lot of people, that is, their whole work might,
I mean, at least the years that they credited
and you get 90% back of your average earnings on year,
you know, the cutoff it 1212.
- So yeah, I haven't looked at what it is
for this year, but it's something like that. Yes.
- Yeah. So you get 90% and ob you know, better
or worse, there's a lot of people in that category.
So they get 90%
of the first 12,000 people work part-time part,
they're outta labor force period of time.
Disproportionately that's women, you know,
they spend more time raising kids.
So disproportionate women in that category.
But then you get 35% on your next,
and again, I'm shooting in the dark here,
it's roughly 40,000.
You know, we used to know these numbers by harm. Yes.
So you get 30, 33% of the next, let's say 40 or 50,000,
and then higher incomers, you know, they get 15%
of their income above, let's say 60,000.
Again, don't take me to town on that,
but it's somewhere around there.
So it's a very progressive payback structure, which again,
we could core with where you have the cutoffs.
Should it be higher? Nancy's making the point.
It would be good if it were higher. I'd agree with that.
You know, but you could talk about all sorts
of ways to restructure that.
But it's clearly a very bad, very progressive
payback structure, which is one
of the reasons why it keeps a lot of people,
they have low earnings during their working lifetime,
but even with their low earnings during their life lifetime,
they could still, it still gives them enough to stay out
of poverty, which isn't to say it gives them enough to have
great lifestyle or anything,
but it's enough to keep them outta property.
- Yeah. And it's, again,
and I think it fits with the insurance concept
because, you know, it's sort of beyond behind the veil.
You don't know when you're starting out in your career,
whether, you know, I mean, you can
speculate somebody's has higher education
and so forth, likely to make a high salary,
but anybody can get hit by a truck
and, um, wind up, um, with a disability where they,
they just cannot support themselves through work.
And therefore having
that progressive benefit formula is really beneficial
for everyone at the start of your career. You know, and it,
- Yeah, yeah, again, that's, that is again, a point
that has to be emphasized.
'cause I've come across, I'm sure you have many people
that really don't understand that idea of insurance.
They go, well, I've, you know, I'm a lawyer.
I earn 200,000 a year, you know,
which would put you over the top
and you know, your payback would be relatively low relative
to your two thou 200,000 a year.
Because you're at the high end, you're getting, you know,
15% your average pay goals, it's real bad deal for you.
Well, maybe they're able to work their whole life
as a lawyer and it ends up not being that good a payback.
Well, you know, I'm in good health.
My health insurance has been a real bad deal for me.
So I angry you,
- My, my hat's never burned down.
So there you go. And I've always had fire
insurance - .
Yeah, yeah. You know, so, so
that's the nature of it being insurance.
And you know, as, as you said a moment ago, I mean, yeah,
you know, you have a good job.
You, you know, it turns out you earn 200,000 a year,
your whole working life, so it
doesn't give you that good of payback.
But there's no guarantee you don't get hit by a truck.
You don't get real sick. I, you know, we've all known people
that, you know, they're relatively young
and they have something that happens to them.
And even though they're on a good career track
where they would've had high earnings, they don't,
because, you know, they, they get sick
or they were in an accident,
and you know, from the time they're 33,
they're barely able to work.
Yeah. Maybe not work at all.
They're gonna get a better, you know,
they'll get a good return on their social security benefits.
It's, again, it's important to understand it's insurance.
That's the design. We aren't making up words here.
It's actually called, you know, uh, social insurance.
- Sure. That's yes. Survivors.
And in fact, um, one of the stories I I read about
that really struck me
and that I really like to talk about is social security is
disproportionately beneficial
to those who've been disadvantaged in the workplace.
So people of color, women, lgbtq plus community,
but it's actually important for, you know, I like
to joke wealthy white men as well,
because, um, there was a story that, uh, about a couple
did very well, were retired in Florida, had millions
of dollars, had a very pleasant lifestyle and so forth,
but made one mistake.
They happened to put all of their, give all their money
to invest to Bernie Madoff.
And when they woke up
and found out what had happened, they were destitute
and they only had their social security.
And thank god they had that social security
'cause they would've been on the street.
So again, we, it, it, it's insurance.
It's there to protect you as, as you
and I say, you know, a lot of kinds of insurance.
You'd rather, I I'd prefer to pay for disability insurance
and never collect disability insurance,
but it is there if something were to happen.
- Yeah. It's also, and,
and again, uh, obviously Nancy knows this very well.
I mean, it's incredibly efficient. You made this point out.
It's, you know, superior to private plans.
I, you know, we've both been in this debate forever.
I dunno how many times, you know,
I've gone up against the privatizing
and go, oh, it's just, you know, 1% a year.
If you have a 401k, often they're considerably
that often the administrative costs, they're often
around one half, even 2% people have analyzed that closely.
So you often have a lot of plans
where they're very high administrative costs.
But what's important to understand, they compare that
to the administrative cost for social security,
which is less than four tenths of 1% of
what it pays out the benefits each year.
So they compare the one one 5% for, for their 401k
to the four tenths, and they go,
eh, it's not that different.
That's very misleading.
'cause let's say I put my $10,000 in 401k,
they're charging me one, 1.5% each year.
So if it's sitting in that 401k for 20
or 30 years, I've paid maybe 25, even 30% of
what I'm ultimately gonna get out of that.
I've paid that to the company, to the financial company
that's administering the 401k.
So we aren't just talking about, well, even 1% for 4s,
it's more than twice as much.
Yeah. But even that's a big difference.
But it's actually much more,
we're talking about saying it's more than a order
of magnitude different, which, you know, to my view,
that's one of the big reasons why there's
so many people interest in privatizing it,
because that's waste.
You, oh, I think Doge looking to get rid waste.
Well, that's some serious waste.
But that waste is income for, for banks,
for insurance companies, for, for businesses
and financial industry that would love to be able
to get their hands on social security funds.
So that's, yeah. You know, again, I'm sorry, go ahead.
- No, no, I was gonna just agree with you.
I mean, that's exactly what I think, um,
is going on right now is, you know, as much as, um,
George W President Bush back in 2005 sought
to privatize Social security
and I think security for just that reason, that, so
that there could be, um, um, the Wall Street could make,
you know, about $1.5 trillion flows
through Social Security every year.
Wall Street gets none of that.
And they would like to get a, a big chunk of that, at least
for administration and brokerage fees and so forth.
Um, but to George w Bush's credit,
he at least had a proposal that he put on the table
and went around and talked about, and you and I
and others could debate about it
and show all the problems with it.
And it didn't even get a vote in a Republican held Congress
because it was such an unpopular, um,
idea and such a bad idea.
But what they're doing now is worse,
which is all behind closed doors.
I mean, you mentioned Doge, Elon Musk's department
of supposed to be of government efficiency,
but it's really creating enormous amount of waste
and inefficient and inefficiency and, um,
and opening the door to outright fraud.
- Yeah. Just to, to back up,
we'll come back to that in a second.
I just wanted to, you know, emphasize some
of the misleading claims that really, you know, often made,
but certainly made by Elon Musk about social security.
So one, he's, I don't know what's in his head,
so I can't say what he's convinced of,
but he constantly talks about the fraud there.
And, you know, again, this is one of these things, you know,
I mean, it's more general with Doge,
of course there's waste, of course
there's fraud in the government.
You know, it's a huge enterprise.
How can you dish out $7 trillion a year
and not think there's some fraud?
And we do have, you know,
the general Account Government Accountability Office,
which actually does do that.
We have inspector generals at Social Security,
at the other agencies that spend careers.
They have professionals. They've been looking at this
for years and years and years.
And you know, in the case of social security,
they have looked for fraud.
And they know it's very rare.
And you might have the data on that.
- I do. It's, I mean, you're exactly right.
You know, they're running around claiming all
this, um, fraud.
But this is another way that social security is superior.
There's much more fraud in private, um, insurance.
You know, the American Academy
of Actuaries have done studies about that
with very widespread fraud.
And a lot of private sector insurance,
social security has been audited.
It's constantly audited.
It's got the Inspector General who again,
if the Trump administration were concerned about fraud,
I think their first move would not have been
to fire the Inspector General whose job it is
to be looking for that.
Um, and so,
but there's also been lots of outside auditors.
It's a very heavily audited program.
And what they found is that 99.7%
of all the payments are accurate in full on time
to the right people.
And that 0.3%, even that most of that is
are, um, payments made in error.
So, for example, where information gets is changed,
it's reported, but
because social security is understaffed, it takes a while
to get the information, um, through the systems.
And so there may be several months of overpayments,
or there could be underpayments as well.
They're not fraud, but they're just mistakes.
And with respect to overpayments, that money is clawed back
as soon as the government realizes it's, um,
it was a higher benefit
that should have been paid. And in fact, yeah,
- I can give you a very example that I, I, I know someone
who was getting disability and her situation improved.
And she sent, she wrote to Social Security
and said, you know, I shouldn't be getting it.
I'm able to work now, at least the
disability's not preventing me from working.
And she continued to get checks for around three months,
four months from whatever the,
whatever the period of time was.
And then they processed it
and they said, oh, okay, you have to get that money.
Give us the money back. Which she did.
You know, so they got the money back.
So, you know, so it was
- Payment, it may not be a loss to the government,
and there tend to be,
and this thank this is thanks
to the Republicans in Congress,
the administration wrongly I think,
or, um, uh, Trump administration's probably different,
but prior administrations were much more diligent about
overpayments than underpayments.
Yeah. You know, and that's, to me is,
is shouldn't be that way.
But, but the point is that the actual fraud,
and there is, as you say, in any program this size,
there's going to be, there are gonna be attempts.
And in fact, even fraud, you know, scam, they, they get
your money deposited from supposed to go
to your bank account, they switch the
bank account or something.
Usually people discover that right away.
And even though they might not catch the fraudster,
they stop the, um, fraudulent payments.
So just looking at snapshots doesn't
really tell the full story.
- Yeah. I remember this, again,
I've talked about this in the past, but the Washington Post,
and this is the sort of reporting that encourages people
to think poorly of social security.
They had a big front page story, jumped to two full pages
inside about how social security paid out.
And I'm forgetting the exact number or something, like two
or $3 billion to dead people.
And you know, any of us would see that, you know, well we,
we have our nose of the numbers, but most people don't.
I don't blame them. They have other things to do.
They have lives to go, oh my God,
they paid out $2 billion for dead people.
And then if you read, if you actually read
through the piece, it was over, I think five year period
and most of it was gotten back,
and the percentage of the actual payments,
and again, I don't have the number at my fingertip,
but it was something like 1000th of 1%
of the actual payments.
Now, I, I've raised that people
and go, well, it should be zero.
We'd love it to be zero, but that's not the real world.
Well, you know, do you wanna spend 10 billion
to catch 2 billion in, in overpayments?
Most of which you get back anyhow.
You know, that's, anyhow,
but that's the sort of thing because, you know,
- There's also, and some of this also,
people don't understand because Congress, in some sense,
the, again, the concerns in Congress are
so concerned about fraud, that they have made the program
so incredibly complicated
that in some cases overpayments are impossible to avoid.
Lemme give you just one example,
and that is that you, your payment is,
the payment people get is for the month
before your social security benefit.
And to be eligible for that payment, you have
to be alive every single day of that month.
Now, I think that's wrong.
I think if you die on the last day of the month,
you should get a prorated benefit.
You should get most of the benefit. Um, but you don't.
So imagine someone,
or you don't, I mean, I'm sure it happens, happens,
but think of a case where someone dies on the last day
of the month, and then their benefit is to be paid
on the first Wednesday of the following month.
Well, there might only be a day
or two between those two events,
and so there's gonna be an overpayment
because it, the death hasn't even been reported.
That is an overpayment.
Now, as the government will find out about that, you know,
two days later, and they'll go to the bank account
and they'll scoop the money back,
or if the bank account's been closed, they'll go
to the family, a grieving family and get the money back.
But that's one where I would argue there's no way it can be,
that's not even, um, an error
or careless, it's just you can't get the
information that quickly.
So just because,
and that would be a dead payment,
dead person getting a payment because they're dead.
- And, and that undoubtedly is the bulk of the, you know,
not necessarily the last day of the month,
but it's someone. But, but
- Something like that where it's, yeah,
- Yeah, that's the bulk of the, it was striking.
And again, obviously you're totally on top of this Elon Musk
and who know, again, I don't, can't speak
for what's in his head, but say 20 million, he found a file
that has a hundred, what was it, uh,
20 million people over the age of 115 or something.
And he's going, oh my God,
all these people are getting checks.
And you know, again, if he had talked to anyone there,
they would've explained to, this is an inactive file.
None of them are getting checks. They know they're dead.
And the reason why they don't clean it up is it would cost
them millions of dollars to clean it up.
Congress doesn't wanna give them, you know, so,
so they have this file, it, it,
it has no consequence for the program.
It's not that they're getting checks.
So yeah, they have a file with people
who are 130 years old if they were alive,
but they know they're alive, they're not getting checks.
- And in fact, I mean, one, um, thing, I, I mean,
that's one thing where, you know, someone, um, is born,
gets a number and then dies at age 10
and is never gonna get a benefit.
Um, it would be a way, it would really be a misuse
of dedicated revenue to be cleaning that up,
because there's, it's, IM immaterial that the name, the,
the, um, the person has a number.
But even more than that, and this again shows Elon Musk
and Donald Trump's ignorance that
you can have dependence on a, on a, on an earnings record,
so that you still need that social security number
and that earnings record even after the person has died.
I mean, as I was looking at this, you know, the last person
to get a Civil War pension, it was five years ago in 2020,
and that was because it was a disabled adult daughter
of a Civil War veteran who had, um, so, you know,
the daughter had been born, um, towards the end of his life
and lived a long life.
So it, it, again, it's um, this has been very,
very heavily audited
and the program is extremely efficiently run
and accurately run.
- So let's talk a little bit about specifically, you know,
'cause obviously we know Elon Musk
and Doge have been getting into to the running
of social security in a big way.
And you wanna say a little bit about what,
what the issues have been raised and obvious since a lot of
- Them, it's, it's really, and I have a whole theory
and we sort of were touching on it, what, what is going on?
But the, um,
Elon Musk has been looking, he, as soon as the, um,
after January 20th, these Doge minions, you know, one
as young as 19, the, you know, the, the races
who got fired and was brought back.
They're, they've been all over the Social Security
administration and they, um, they were seeking
our most sensitive files.
I mean, these are, there is
so much they're doing this in every agency,
but all of our, we, you know, we have an agreement
with the government that we provide, uh,
the sensitive information to them
for a mission driven purpose.
And that is to, um, in the case of social security,
to keep our earnings records
and our, our family's earnings records and so forth.
And in, actually, in the case of disability insurance,
if you've even applied for disability insurance,
even if you haven't gotten it,
you have all your medical records
that the Social Security Administration has.
It's got a lot of sensitive records.
If somebody's in a witness protection program
and has to get a new social security numbers, all kinds of
information, no one in the history of the program has had
access to all of the information,
and the only ones who've had access at all, they'd have
to have very mission specific purpose.
And then they talk about it being sandboxed.
So it's, and it's very securely held.
It's always been looked at in, in a very secure way.
And there'll be, um, and so forth.
The, um, January 20th came
and the, um, acting commissioner,
'cause of course the, the political commissioner had had
left the one, the, um, Martin O'Malley
and then Carolyn Colvin.
So the acting commissioner was named by Trump,
was someone who'd been there for 30
or more over 30 years, was very, um,
had been in very high level positions, was kind
of the perfect person you'd think of
as the acting was not political and so forth.
And she was very cooperative, um, until they asked
for access to everything, including the source code,
so they could rewrite anything in our in.
And she, I know her,
and I'm sure she was very polite in explaining
to them why they could not have that broad access,
but if they could explain what they needed,
she would provide it for them.
And of course, what happened was the next day she was
sent an email saying she was no
longer the acting commissioner.
The person who was the act
to be the acting commissioner had,
was actually on administrative leave.
He was a middle level, um,
person at Social Security Administration who'd been leaking
information and working with Doge,
even though his bosses didn't know that he was doing that.
And so he'd been put on administrative leave,
he now was the new acting commissioner.
He was leapfrogged over about 120 more senior people.
His one, um, um, qualification was
that he'd give Doge whatever they wanted.
And so that's who now has all of that on top of it.
And he has acknowledged
that he's not calling the shots, the White House.
They have hollowed out the agency.
They, the, it's, uh, Dean, it's gonna sound crazy,
but it's not an exaggeration to say nearly a thousand years
of institutional knowledge has walked out the door in the
last few weeks or been pushed out the door.
People who'd worked there 30, 35, 40 years.
And as a result, people who were, um,
the top people on cybersecurity, people
who maintain the website, all of them gone,
the communications people.
So now you know how SSA
issues doesn't issue press releases anymore.
It puts statements on X.
That's how the public gets their information from the Social
Security Administration, a for-profit platform
that has advertisements.
I mean, it's just outrageous.
But they have, um, decimated the agency. The, um,
- If I, if I could just back up
because I emphasize a couple things here.
Sure. First off, I'll start with that last one
because it is, this has happened with a number of agencies
and I trust people know X is Elon Musk platform.
So here you have government agencies that instead
of issuing press releases that are freely available
to whoever wants, I mean, to general public,
but also obviously to the media, to to, to press.
That's what they're designed for.
You have to instead go to X.
And how they could think that's justified, how they think
that can make sense is just mind boggling.
I mean, you know, obviously You don't even have
to argue it's a conflict of interest.
What else can we just call it?
But you know, the other point, you know, I think people have
to, you know, we're researchers.
We, we work with this stuff, you wanna look for fraud,
they could give you the d you don't need the person's name.
You could, you know, here's, here's, you know,
here's the information, here's
how we calculate their benefit,
you know, whatever it might be.
And that's done all the time.
You know, and the Social Security administration,
the professional staff who have been there,
were perfectly willing to tell Elon Musk, okay,
you wanna look over a million files?
We'll give you the data, but we're not gonna
allow you in there.
So you have that you could find information,
you really have no business finding out.
You don't get to know their medical history. You don that.
That's not your business. And you don't get to play with it.
You know, again, we have to trust them that, you know, I,
I've worked 35 years, whatever period,
you're not gonna change that.
Make it 15 years, you know, you know,
- That's right.
- I assume they didn't do that,
but, you know, there's no way
- To know.
There's no way to know.
And in fact, I was told, I don't know if this is right
or not, but I'm afraid it may be
that social security has always gotten a clean audit.
As I say, it gets audited by outside, um,
auditors all the time.
And it's always a clean audit.
I'm, I'm told that it will never have another clean audit.
'cause they'll have to be an asterisk
because for just the reason you're saying
that no one knows whether something's been changed.
There's no way to, to find out.
Um, which is it just,
and that's, that's sort of almost the,
the most trivial aspect of all this.
I mean, they are doing real damage, even if they are, um,
you know, even if they had the most benign motives,
and I don't believe that they do,
but even if they did, it is a complicated system.
You to, to make changes, you really have
to understand the program
because you, it's not just that it's COBOL
and the language that, a computer
language that they don't know.
It's also that these people don't know the program
because you have to know what order to put things in.
And it may have, um, one change may have
another change, um, somewhere else.
And they're talking about this another thing that's, uh,
there's so much that crazy stuff going on,
but they've talked about re updating the whole, um,
systems within a few months.
That is the experts I talked to that is almost certain
to cause problems with cascading effects
and could crash the entire system.
- Yeah. One of the things, and again, they're mocked for it,
but you know, they use this language cobol, which goes back,
I think to the sixties, you know, it's a, yeah,
- It's - An ancient, can make fun of them for that.
But there's there, there's a logic to that.
And it, it's simply that
because it has been used for so long
and on such a large scale, we know there are no bugs in it.
- Exactly. - And, you know, we get the,
he calls 'em super high iq,
I maybe give him an IQ does, I don't know.
But you know, that, you know, ,
we get the Doge boys in there and maybe they are very smart.
I have no idea. But you know,
when you put in a new system there, the idea,
it's gonna run perfectly and there won't be serious bugs.
I mean, it'd be great if that were true,
but know there are a lot of very smart people that try
working on changing the program before,
and they all backed away
because they realized they, they couldn't do it. So,
- And they, and there's no reason to update it.
The, the, the concerns are there are fewer
and fewer people who know cobol
and they're, they're, you know, they charge, they,
they're expensive because there are so few of them.
Um, but it, it's a system that works.
And, you know, I, I was reading about sort of this idea
that, oh, the cool kids, you know, it's not the, uh,
program the cool kids know.
Well, it's, as you say, it's a program
that is operated for so long.
It's, it's, the bugs are gone.
And if you have any kind of new system,
they're gonna be putting bugs in
and it's gonna be cascading, um, problems
because they don't know the, they,
they don't understand the program,
and they're not taking the time if you were gonna do this.
And they, they do it with little pieces of it.
They have been updating the system and you do little pieces
and you test them, and you have redundancies,
and you make sure before you turn one off
and turn the other on that it's not that it's going
to produce the right results.
You can't do that in a few months. That takes years.
And that's just that they're also making
all kinds of changes.
And again, this is, I think
because of the fraud on what you can do on the phone,
because they claim there's fraud where there's not fraud.
And it's just creating chaos
and it's creating the opportunity for scammers to come in
and, um, prey on a population seniors
who are disproportionately or subject to scams.
- Yeah. The phone issue was, you know, they, they said that,
and I think they backtracked on this,
but people wouldn't be able to set up their,
or change their, uh, direct deposit over the phone.
And of course, a lot of, almost
by definition we're talking about people,
we're talking about disabled people, many
of those people will have trouble working on the
internet, and there's
- More fraud on the internet. I mean, that's the,
- Yeah, no, and, and, yeah, exactly.
This is what I was gonna get to.
Elon Musk was running around saying that 40%
of the phone calls are fraudsters.
- Oh, yeah. - And,
and what the actual statistics was, 40% of the fraud
is done over the phone.
- Exactly. - Which is like, you know,
like totally opposite.
I dunno what that's like one in a, one in
- One in 3,100 phone calls.
- So, yeah. So it just, you know, again, you just go like,
he gets this number that, you know,
obviously he wanted to say it.
I'm sure Elon Musk could figure out if we sat him down
and explained, oh, it's, you know, 40% of the fraud,
not 40% of the phone calls.
But yeah, he just totally misrepresented it.
And as a result of that, he's proposing his policy.
That'd be an incredible inconvenience for, you know,
hundreds of thousands, maybe millions of people. Millions.
- No, and because they were also saying that you couldn't,
you had to come in, um, when you're filing a claim,
you really had to file it in person or over the internet.
Again, in person.
They're, first of all, over the internet,
especially in rural areas, there are a lot of people
who don't have broadband.
And the field offices could be mile, you know, hour
and hours drive, drive away,
and they're talking about closing the field offices.
So it's, it's this sort of Orwellian stuff where they say,
okay, people who work in the field offices
cannot work remotely.
They have to go into the field offices,
but by the way, we're gonna cancel.
We're gonna close all the field offices, offices,
they've already closed regional offices.
They've created chaos.
Where the employees themselves don't know,
they find out about these changes the
same way the public does.
And the public starts calling, and they don't have answers
because it hasn't been vetted.
They haven't been trained. They,
the policies haven't even really been
very well thought through.
And so they keep reversing them.
I mean, it's really, um, as I say,
the most benign is that they're incompetent.
But unfortunately, I think they're really trying
to undermine the system.
So you take your pick, is that, yeah,
- It sure seems that way.
You know, again, the abuse of the workers.
So, you know, again, they talk about these people, like,
you know, they're living high on the hard, you know, I,
you know, we both don't make people work in social security.
You can make comfortable living.
You're not getting rich there.
You know, most of the people could get much more money in
the private sector, but they, they're, they're there,
they're serving the public.
They understand what they're doing.
And, you know, here's Musk comes in
and he just treats 'em like shit.
You know, like, oh, you know, that was the policy.
Today, it's a different policy.
Oh, tomorrow it's a different one.
You know, and it's just,
- And it's demeaning and it's,
and it's the, you know, go get a real job basically,
even though these, these jobs are so hard
and really, um, not well compensated.
And, but people do it because they believe in the mission
and they believe in public service,
but they're, you're right.
It's, it's just horrible. And on top of it, they never know.
They don't know from day to day what's gonna happen.
You know, they're said, okay, fork in the road. Okay.
You know, there's the carrot of you can, um, retire early,
or you can leave and take, get a lump sum payment,
but the stick is, if you don't,
you're probably gonna be fired.
And those are starting now we're in this phase two
where they're huge number.
So you've got an agency that is, uh,
was already at a 50 year low
and is now, um, they're talking about getting rid
of about 15% more.
So it's understaffed, overworked,
and it's just spiraling downward.
And it's really, I mean, 50 year low is actually
an understatement because
what happened 50 years ago was the enactment of SSI.
And so before SSSI, the administration was,
was the social security program.
So it's, I think it's basically
probably the lowest it's ever been. Certainly,
- Just to be clear for people, SSI is
supplemental security income.
So it's it's an add on.
It's not part of the regular Social security program.
Exactly. So that is a means tested program.
And actually for that reason, it requires a lot
of administrative staff that you don't need
for Social security, the, the disability part
of Social security and social security itself,
because that's not means tested.
It's you have an earnings record. Exactly.
You know, they, they don't have
to go out and check your income.
- And of course, again,
because it's, uh, it's a kind of demonized program,
even though it's a really important program,
there are all kinds of, you know, you have
to bring your pay stubs in every month
to show you what you've earned.
And if your family gives you
groceries, you have to report that.
I mean, it's ki so that it,
the supplemental security income represents about 5%
of all the benefits that go out.
95% are for social security, yet it's something like 40%
of the administrative expenses or SSI expenses.
So again, it gives you a sense of
how much resources are devoted
to administering that program.
- Let me get to something I'm sure is about
that use scares me to death, uh, bad term.
Um, the, the use
of the Social Security death files in an immigration.
Yes. I, I, you, you know more about than I do.
I'm sure this one really scared me.
- Yes. So despite what the richest man in the world,
Elon Musk, and at the moment,
the most powerful man in the world, Donald Trump
will spout about all these dead people getting benefits.
You know, I mean, I can't believe that Donald Trump on a,
a joint session to Congress that was broadcast nationwide,
spent minutes talking about just lies,
about all these people getting benefits, actually,
because social, the Congress breezed down the nexts
of SSA to make sure that there aren't overpayments.
They are extreme.
This administration is ex has always been extremely diligent
in making sure that payments
of people who've died terminate immediately.
So it used to be funeral homes
and families that reported there was a lump sum death
benefit that was put in, in the 1950s part.
The idea was to pay, um, funeral costs,
but it was also d an incentive for people to report when,
right away, when someone, um, a beneficiary had died,
they spend millions of dollars.
The Social Security Administration spends millions
of dollars every year, all 50 states have
what are called electronic death registries.
So when the death is reported, it's immediately checked out
and the, um, the information's immediately transmitted
to the Social Security Administration
and benefits are, are terminated immediately.
So it's actually, they're extremely quick
about catching that.
And actually, there's a problem where sometimes
they make a mistake and someone who's alive,
um, is recorded.
It could be that in the funeral home,
the person's filling it out, you know, a spouse
or someone who's upset, misunderstands
and fills out their own name
or their own social security number, you know,
where it's supposed to be the deceased persons or something.
So a person who's living gets on, um,
is reported as dead.
And that is devastating.
That it is hard to underestimate how catastrophic,
I wouldn't wish that on my, you know, worst enemy.
It's a, because what happens is not only are your benefits,
um, canceled
and your Medicare, if you're getting health insurance,
so you have no health insurance,
but that even though that, um, um,
death Master filed, there's supposed to be caveats
and so forth, they, they are used by banks and others.
And so your, your banks are closed, your credit cards,
your your houses, um, is,
uh, put up for sale.
I mean, all kinds of things.
And it can take, you can get in these endless loops
of trying to correct it.
There was a, a case,
there's actually a class action against Social Security now
because a woman was put on, um, inadvertently
was reported as dead.
And she, it took her months and months and months
and months to correct it.
And within seven months of that having happened, she died.
And her family believes that a lot of it is
because of the stress and the horror.
I mean, again, can you imagine you have no health insurance,
you have nothing, you can't, so
- This is actually what I want to highlight.
You know, that, uh, Musk, actually, I forget the number.
I believe it was 6,000 people.
- 6,000, that's right. And
that's gonna just do the beginning.
- Yeah. And you know, so they, they recorded them as dead.
So as they understand it,
and who knows that they're accurate,
but they're saying they had identified 6,000
people who aren't here legally.
And again, we dunno what standard they're applying.
They had them classified as dead, which means that,
you know, they can't work, they can't have a bank account,
they can't use a credit card if they own property,
if they own a house, they lose it. You know, they
- Lose their health insurance, they lose everything.
And in fact, the thing that's so crazy about the concept,
this is to get them to, to, um, um, self deport,
is that you couldn't even do that.
You can't buy a plane ticket.
You can't, um, get a visa for, you know, if you're,
if the world thinks you're dead, you cannot do any of that
because it would be viewed as fraudulent.
But what the fraudulence is putting someone on the death
master file when you know they're not dead.
It's, it's really cruel and horrible.
And, and it's, it's part of this administration, which is,
I think cruelty is part of the game.
- And again, just to be clear, we don't even know, I mean,
we saw how careless they've been in sending people, uh,
prison in El Salvador.
They have not, these people haven't had a trial.
They haven't gone through a legal process.
It's just however the names came to Elon Musk
or whoever's calling the shots there,
you know, it was Stein.
They've decided these people should leave the country
and they're reporting them as dead.
Now, they could be US citizens for all we know.
For all they know. They,
- Well, they could be enemies of the,
and I, you know, they could be, you know, they're not,
probably not gonna do it to Liz Cheney
'cause she's too well known.
But you could imagine they could do it to, um,
people they don't like,
or people who've registered Democratic
or, you know, who knows how they might,
and again, you've got these young guys, you know,
they might say, Hey, let's, let's do every fifth person.
I mean, how would we ever know? And, um, yeah, no,
- It's a very, very similar, - And for that matter,
that would be the worst, putting them
on the Death Master file.
But as you said, they could wipe out your earnings record.
They could say, um, you don't have, um,
quarters of coverage.
You don't, you're not eligible for your,
the benefits you've earned.
So this is, and there is no oversight.
Congress is completely silent.
We don't know what these people are doing.
And that's what's, that's, I mean,
there are many scarier things.
The the idea of any of us could be picked up on the street
and find ourselves in El Salvador.
I mean, how, you know, that could happen.
How, I mean, we, you know, people probably saw what the,
that Tuft student, um, who was surrounded
by all these men in black and whisked away.
I mean, she could have been whisked away to El Salvador,
and what was she supposed to do at that point?
Yeah. So it's, that of course is much more serious.
But that doesn't minimize the idea that they can just, um,
undermine say, Hey, I don't like the way you look.
You're not getting social security even though you've worked
your whole life for it.
- And, and that's exactly why these files had always been
very tightly held by professional staff.
And that's why, you know, you know the Biden, you know,
they have all these crazy stories about Biden was doing this
and Obama was doing that.
No, no. None of them ever tried.
And if they did try, probably have heard about it.
But if they did try, professional staff would've said no.
And if they for some reason have persisted,
I'm sure they would've contacted members of Congress
who would've stepped in and said, no, you can't do that.
In this case, you know, the Republicans of Congress,
and obviously they control the House and Senate.
They're like, we didn't see anything okay.
By us. Whatever. Yeah,
- No, and it's, um, it's really unbelievable.
Um, what's going on.
And then in fact, you can, there has a, is a lawsuit
that has been brought, um, by a number
of the unions against, um, the,
against Social Security administration against
Elon Musk and so forth.
And there was, there have been what are called declarations.
There's sort of like depositions or,
and there have been some whistleblowers too
who have come forward and they're really chilling reading,
but it's, um, and it's online so anyone can read it.
But there was, I mentioned Michelle King,
the acting commissioner who'd been named by um,
Donald Trump, but was fired when she wouldn't give them,
or was replaced when she wouldn't give them
access to all of this data.
Her chief of staff filed what's called a declaration
in great detail about all of this.
And one of the things she said that really got me was
that the data's always been held very securely.
It's gotta be seen on site in certain kinds of very
controlled, um, environments.
But the Doge people took it off site
and they were looking at an OPM, they have no idea who was,
who had a, who was legitimately had access.
Somebody walking by could look at it.
I mean, it's, and again, a lot of this is, some
of this is national security stuff.
If someone has, um, defected to this country
and gotten a new identity that
that's data you don't want loosely, um, you know, others
to be able to hack into it.
And there, so the good news is there was a lawsuit
and the, um, plaintiffs got a temporary restraining order
and have just gotten a preliminary injunction.
But of course, Elon Musk
and Donald Trump, it's not like they're so, uh, um,
sensitive to the rule of law and,
and, uh, the understanding of checks and balances.
And so I'm quite concerned that they're circumventing it
because a lot of the Doge people are being embedded.
The, the, the, um, the, what the court said was that,
that the Doge people could not, um, have access to any
of this information.
And to the extent they already had, they had to delete it.
Um, but it's hard to know whether they're really doing
what they're supposed to be doing.
- Lemme just mention something.
I don't usually give financial advice,
but I'll get some financial advice here.
Um, people should, if you don't already have a copy
of your Social Security earnings record, get one,
get a hard copy, keep it somewhere secure,
make two copies of it.
Because again, we should, you know, we should hope
that they keep your records intact.
They've done that for, you know,
the program's entire existence.
But that's not unfortunately something we could
take for granted at this point.
- And it's, it, I, I a hundred percent agree with that.
And one of the things that really angers me is that
the law requires that those statements be mailed
to everyone age 25 and older every year.
And they're, that is the law.
That's, that is not discretionary.
That is a requirement of the law.
But during the George W. Bush years, the commissioner at
that time claiming they didn't have the money
for it, stopped the mailing.
Even though there are a lot
of other things they could have stopped
continuing disability reviews.
There are all kinds of things they could have stopped,
but they chose to stop that.
And even democratic administrations have not restored it.
And that's unfortunate.
But, um, you still can get that either by going online
or you can write and, and get the record.
And I agree that,
and the other advice I would give
to people is political advice, which is to call your members
of Congress, your senators and your representative.
And I would call them every day
and demand that there be some oversight
of Elon Musk, so we know what he's doing.
- We should probably, uh, cut this off there.
But thanks a lot for coming on.
And you know, this is, you know, both
of us obviously think it's incredibly important program
and you know, it's really crucial
that we protect and preserve it.
So absolutely. Thanks for coming out
- And expand.
And expand. A big expand.
- Yeah, we'll come to that in the next show.
Let's, let's hope we have a time
to seriously talk about Hispanic.
- Thank you so much for having me.
- If you like what you just saw, please help us out
by liking us and subscribing. Thank
- You.