Claim: Musk got the 150 yr old SS recipients figure from COBOL's default date of 1875

[fizzBuzz]

Earlier this week, Elon Musk met with the press alongside Trump in the Oval Office. There, he claimed that Social Security recipients of 150 yrs old are receiving checks. Here is the full video:

Source: https://youtu.be/Sa1m5OuF5Tk?si=6209SdVXdkqtOr7U&t=480


People took to Twitter, with one guy claiming that 1875 is the Epoch time for COBOL. This meaning the default value, or zero-value date, is the year 1875. As a comparison, Javascript's Epoch time is January 1st, 1970 UTC. And all datetime values in javascript are represented as the milliseconds from this epoch date. That sounds like it would be aggravating to deal with... and it is.

Source: https://x.com/ArmandDoma/status/1890569493140697343


I am a programmer, but I know nothing about COBOL even though I can sort of read it (I feel bad for back-in-the-day coders). Any COBOL experts in the house? I did find that the ISO-8601:2004 standard introduced a reference calendar date of May 20th, 1875. But does this work like epoch time? Or does it just mark the beginning of the calendar's formatting capabilities?

I did verify, at least to some degree, that the SSA system runs on COBOL. This article is from 2016. But it also states that, starting in 2012, the agency has taken an opportunistic approach to reduce it's reliance on COBOL. How much has been converted to date, who knows?

SSA maintains more than 60 million lines of COBOL today, along with millions more lines of other legacy programming languages.

https://oig.ssa.gov/congressional-t...ressional-testimony-july14-ssa-modernization/

 

[deirdre]

heres a wiki list of epoch times for different "systems? " neither of the COBOLs say 1875.
BUT the internet is assuming COBOL, as your link states there are "other legacy programming languages",

**and note, just because its in wiki doesnt mean its true. there are source links for COBOL and COBOLAIX you can check.

Article:

The following table lists epoch dates used by popular software and other computer-related systems. The time in these systems is stored as the quantity of a particular time unit (days, seconds, nanoseconds, etc.) that has elapsed since a stated time (usually midnight UTC at the beginning of the given date).

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epoch_(computing)

 

[fizzBuzz]

Thanks for the response. I think the first thing to do would be to find out "at any point during the life of COBOL, has 1875 been an epoch time - or - has some ISO standard throughout that time mimicked epoch time" at all. If we can rule that out, then we know the claim is false. If we can rule it in, then we would have to investigate whether the SS system is using this version/standard of COBOL - which would obviously be hard to do.

If we have any long time users of COBOL on the site, I think they could be able to give some valuable insight on this.

 

[deirdre]

Thanks for the response. I think the first thing to do would be to find out "at any point during the life of COBOL, has 1875 been an epoch time - or - has some ISO standard throughout that time mimicked epoch time" at all. If we can rule that out, then we know the claim is false. If we can rule it in, then we would have to investigate whether the SS system is using this version/standard of COBOL - which would obviously be hard to do.

If we have any long time users of COBOL on the site, I think they could be able to give some valuable insight on this.

or you could read the manuals in the wiki source links. i cant read them because i dont know computer stuff.
i will call my uncle tomorrow, hes like 90 years old and used to be a programmer.. but chances he remembers an epoch date are probably slim (if he used COBOL)

 

[FatPhil]

Thanks for the response. I think the first thing to do would be to find out "at any point during the life of COBOL, has 1875 been an epoch time - or - has some ISO standard throughout that time mimicked epoch time" at all. If we can rule that out, then we know the claim is false. If we can rule it in, then we would have to investigate whether the SS system is using this version/standard of COBOL - which would obviously be hard to do.

If we have any long time users of COBOL on the site, I think they could be able to give some valuable insight on this.

ISO-8601 2004 contains this clause:

The Gregorian calendar has a reference point that assigns 20 May 1875 to the calendar day that the
"Convention du Mètre" was signed in Paris.

That precise standard is behind an ISO paywall, but a 2016 draft containing the relevant text is available here: https://www.loc.gov/standards/datetime/iso-tc154-wg5_n0038_iso_wd_8601-1_2016-02-16.pdf
The document makes no mention of what a "reference point" is to be used for except as defining "20 May 1875" to be "the calendar day that the "Convention du Mètre" was signed in Paris.". It's *not* an epoch, it's not a date that other dates are to be measured from (there's a clue in it being called 1875 that it's not a zero of any scale), it's merely a fixed point in time that has a fixed date attached to it. It seems that the paragraph was seemed so useless I am unable to find anything analogous in the published 2019 version of the standard, 8601-1.

And of course, ISO-8601 places no obligation on COBOL programmers to adopt any particular date convention - programmers notorious, if I remember correctly, for using 2-digits to represent years.

As an aside: "the boundaries of the IAU constellations are specified relative to an equinox from near the beginning of the year 1875" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epoch_(astronomy) , which seems even less relevant than COBOL misinformation.

 

[jarlrmai]

My understanding is that date is a used as a calendar reference date in the ISO which means that under that standard this date is the specific date defining a reference for this calendar, like a point in time we can agree on to line up to other calendar systems.

Let's say we both agree that I fell in a ditch while drunk on a certain day, but your calendar gives that as 05/06/2001 and my calendar gives that as "blorg bla-bling aardvark" we can align our calendars based on agreeing those dates are the same moment in time.

They chose that date because it was signing of the "Convention du Mètre" but it could also have been any other date people can agree something happened on, but choosing the date where a lot of people agreed on one thing also means they also probably agreed when it happened as they were involved.

 

[Scaramanga]

" 150 Year Old SS Recipients "

Being from Europe and having no idea what 'SS' is in America, my initial reaction to the title was surely those Nazis are not still alive in Argentina.

 

[Ann K]

Being from Europe and having no idea what 'SS' is in America

"Social Security", money given to retirees. The fund was established by taking money FROM people's paychecks while they work, then doling it out monthly after their retirement; in other words it's our money. It has long been eyed greedily by some in the government.

 

[Mechanik]

I'm retired now, but did earn money coding COBOL back in the day and I can safely say that I never had any need to pay any attention to an epoch or reference date, other than to know what it was. This was true of most early languages.

If any of your dates were going to be prior to that reference date, you needed to develop your own code to identify, store, and interpret those dates.

I'd be more interested in the claim in the title of this thread. I have no doubt that the Social Security system identifies 150 year old people as eligible for payment, but I'm skeptical that that the SSA is actually sending them checks. All it takes is a zero in the birth date field and you're suddenly listed as 150 years old.

I'm now in the (part time) business of fixing bad data and our state and federal systems are worse than anything found in the commercial realm. I see things like this all the time.

 

[JMartJr]

"Social Security", money given to retirees. The fund was established by taking money FROM people's paychecks while they work, then doling it out monthly after their retirement; in other words it's our money. It has long been eyed greedily by some in the government.

I'd offer a qualification on that last -- first, yes it is a big put of money and any such pot will be eyed with greed. However, the fund is also legitimately invested in US Federal Securities, which means the money did indeed go over to be used by the government, but that has always been a very safe investment for money -- not aggressive in terms of growth, but safe. To what extent that remains true is one of the interesting things we'll get to watch play out over the next few years, friends.

But the situation can be seen as analogous to "It's a Wonderful Life," when ol' George Bailey sez:

GEORGE
No, but you . . . you . . . you're thinking of this place all
wrong. As if I had the money back in a safe. The money's not
here. Your money's in Joe's
house . . .
(to one of the men)
. . . right next to yours. And in the Kennedy house, and Mrs.
Macklin's house, and a hundred others. Why, you're lending them
the money to build, and then, they're
going to pay it back to you as best they can. Now what are you
going to do? Foreclose on them?

 

[Diva]

ISO-8601 2004 contains this clause:

The Gregorian calendar has a reference point that assigns 20 May 1875 to the calendar day that the
"Convention du Mètre" was signed in Paris.

That precise standard is behind an ISO paywall, but a 2016 draft containing the relevant text is available here: https://www.loc.gov/standards/datetime/iso-tc154-wg5_n0038_iso_wd_8601-1_2016-02-16.pdf
The document makes no mention of what a "reference point" is to be used for except as defining "20 May 1875" to be "the calendar day that the "Convention du Mètre" was signed in Paris.". It's *not* an epoch, it's not a date that other dates are to be measured from (there's a clue in it being called 1875 that it's not a zero of any scale), it's merely a fixed point in time that has a fixed date attached to it. It seems that the paragraph was seemed so useless I am unable to find anything analogous in the published 2019 version of the standard, 8601-1.

And of course, ISO-8601 places no obligation on COBOL programmers to adopt any particular date convention - programmers notorious, if I remember correctly, for using 2-digits to represent years.

As an aside: "the boundaries of the IAU constellations are specified relative to an equinox from near the beginning of the year 1875" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epoch_(astronomy) , which seems even less relevant than COBOL misinformation.

I was a COBOL programmer way back when. The 2-digit date was used because data storage space was limited and very expensive. Even back then we realized that would cause a problem, but expected the software to be rewritten before the turn of the century when hopefully data storage wasn't a big problem.

The "Y2K panic" was over that exact problem. No one knew how much legacy code with 2-digit dates was still running.

 

[Hevach]

The COBOL I learned on in college technically had an epoch date in 1601, but I don't think it spat out the epoch date for a blank value*. But COBOL is a very weird programming language, more akin to a primitive database system than a programming language.

However this system was made in the 70's and went through a four digit date conversion in the 1990's. A HUGE part of Y2K conversion in legacy systems was implementing workarounds or straight up cheating to get around the seemingly infinite edge cases that COBOL systems were so good at throwing at you. I graduated in 2001 so I never had experience in the conversion process but did see a couple systems after the fact and the two generals rules were 1. Don't assume the field that says date is actually the date and 2. Never touch a system that is working unless you're REALLY sure it's about to stop working.


*-Im not actually sure if I ener tried come to think of it. COBOL is not the system you want to demonstrate garbage in/garbage out with.

 

[Ann K]

I was programming in Fortran when our company was bought out by ICI, and some British managers were sent over to the USA at the time. The American numerical convention for dates is month/day/year, and the British convention is day/month/year, so after this baffled some of the incomers, I had to rewrite reporting programs to put the month in text form so everyone could understand it.

 

[FatPhil]

I was a COBOL programmer way back when. The 2-digit date was used because data storage space was limited and very expensive. Even back then we realized that would cause a problem, but expected the software to be rewritten before the turn of the century when hopefully data storage wasn't a big problem.

The "Y2K panic" was over that exact problem. No one knew how much legacy code with 2-digit dates was still running.

Some made estimations given that no 30 year mortgages started in 1970 broke the system in 1970.

I'll also note that "cares about space" and "uses decimal notation" are contradictory. Then again, some of the compromises, like MicroFocus' mixed radix FY, are in some ways even worse! (Who would want 1 to be the same as 01 - that's crazy talk!)

 

[MonkeeSage]

I found a blog post that provides a number of points showing the claim in OP is probably inaccurate, some of which have already been discussed up thread, but thought it could be good to have them all in one place.

It's a fairly short post but to avoid breaking the link policy I have excerpted the main points below.

https://iter.ca/post/1875-epoch/

The database has years of birth before 1875

In 2007 the SSA released a dataset "containing earnings records for individuals drawn from a 1-percent sample of all Social Security numbers (SSNs) issued before January 2007". They wrote:

The final adjustments included removing 5,935 individuals whose [Year Of Birth] value was before 1870, removing 1,096 individuals whose YOB value was equal to 2007, and removing 4 individuals who were assigned a missing YOB value. Individuals born before 1870 were removed because they were unlikely to have received Social Security benefits.

They explictly say they have records of individuals born in 1869 and earlier, and that they can represent missing birth years!

There is no spike of births in 1875

There is no spike in births in 1875 in that dataset, which you would expect if some process was setting unknown births to 1875:
[image showing chat of birth rates]
The dataset is a 1% sample, so the actual amounts are ~100x larger.

The SSA doesn't use ISO 8601

The Master Beneficiary Record, which tracks social security benefits payments, was created in 1962 - before ISO 8601 was first published in 1988. The predecessor to that standard, ISO 2016 was published in 1976 - still too early, and also it has no reference any date in 1875.

This research paper based on SSA data said that the SSA stores birthdays in a fixed-width format:

The data abstracted from the MBR consisted of a 26-character record for each deceased individual. The four dataitems on each record were… the month and year of death.

None of the datasets published by the SSA I found used ISO 8601 dates either; all of them have a seperate column for year of birth instead of using an ISO 8601 birthdate.

ISO 8601 doesn't have an epoch

ISO 8601 is a format for representing dates as strings, not as numbers. It has no need for an epoch.

Wikipedia says:

ISO 8601:2004 fixes a reference calendar date to the Gregorian calendar of 20 May 1875 as the date the Convention du Mètre (Metre Convention) was signed in Paris (the explicit reference date was removed in ISO 8601-1:2019). However, ISO calendar dates before the convention are still compatible with the Gregorian calendar all the way back to the official introduction of the Gregorian calendar on 15 October 1582.

I.e. the standard only uses 20 May 1875 as a reference date to define the Gregorian calendar, not as some earliest representable date.

Nobody uses 1875 as an epoch

I had found no evidence of 1875 ever being used as an epoch to start counting time from, in any context. I tried to find any case of this happening but I couldn't find any. It's definitely not a standard COBOL thing.

I saw some speculation on the hacker news thread that these could be people still eligible due to quirks:

Social Security started paying out in 1940: https://www.proquest.com/docview/146227490?sourcetype=Histor...
With anyone 65 years or older eligible to start receiving checks.
The 1875 date almost certainly comes from that. I wouldn't be surprised if someone set it as a default for anyone they didn't have a birth date for because you could safely assume someone was older than that if they were receiving social security when it first started _or_ because there are some of those initial payments that truly were never discontinued.

Source: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43074934

Also factor in there were civil war widows legitimately eligible for pensions from their dead soldier husbands until the last one died just a couple of years ago:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Civil_War_widows_who_...
Also can be via your father, this lady was collecting a civil war pension until 2020:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irene_Triplett

Source: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43075559


Musk apparently later posted a tweet showing what appears to be a spreadsheet with age ranges and counts of individuals in those age ranges. Apparently 150 was just an arbitrary age he used as an example.


Source: https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1891350795452654076

According to the Social Security database, these are the numbers of people in each age bucket with the death field set to FALSE!

Maybe Twilight is real and there are a lot of vampires collecting Social Security

 

[Trailblazer]

According to the Social Security database, these are the numbers of people in each age bucket with the death field set to FALSE!

Maybe Twilight is real and there are a lot of vampires collecting Social Security

View attachment 77383

There's a sharp cutoff after the 220-229 category, which suggests there may be quite a few placeholder records with a DOB of 1800 or similar. But there are two older ones so pre-1800 clearly isn't impossible.

Mind you as anyone who has dealt with large databases will know, there always seem to be one or two entries that are complete garbage...

 

[Scaramanga]

Musk apparently later posted a tweet showing what appears to be a spreadsheet with age ranges and counts of individuals in those age ranges. Apparently 150 was just an arbitrary age he used as an example.

It would be interesting to know when the concept of ' missing, presumed dead' arose legally....rather than just 'missing'. Older cases may simply have never been flagged as 'dead' for that reason.

 

[MonkeeSage]

It would be interesting to know when the concept of ' missing, presumed dead' arose legally....rather than just 'missing'. Older cases may simply have never been flagged as 'dead' for that reason.

It looks like since this 1999 ruling, they presume a person is missing either after being reported missing, or by undeliverable mail, and they suspend benefits. After a period of seven years of suspension the person is presumed dead and benefits are terminated.

SSA will presume that a beneficiary has died and will terminate entitlement after the individual's payments have been suspended continuously for 7 years or more because the individual's whereabouts are unknown. [...] If the benefits are suspended for whereabouts unknown based on a reported disappearance by a first party reporter, that is, a relative, another beneficiary on the record, or a representative of the beneficiary who is an acceptable reporter, the date of presumed death generally will be the date of disappearance, barring some convincing evidence that establishes a more likely date of death.

For cases where suspension for whereabouts unknown originated through undeliverable mail, and benefits have remained in suspension for a period of 7 years or more, the date of presumed death will be the date SSA determined that the individual disappeared, barring some evidence to the contrary.

Source: https://www.ssa.gov/OP_Home/rulings/oasi/29/SSR99-01-oasi-29.html


It also appears that since 2015, an automated monthly process finds persons found aged 115 or older in the database that have been in suspended status for seven years and terminates their benefits. Based on this it seems unlikely that Musk's claim is accurate that deceased old people still receive active benefits.

A. Overview of the age 115 or older termination process

Effective September 2015, the Social Security Administration (SSA) implemented an automated process in which the Regular Transcript Attainment and Selection Pass (RETAP) application selects records for which the Title II beneficiary is:

• Age 115 or older;
• In any current continuous suspense for seven years or more; and
• Entitled on a record where there are no other beneficiaries in a non-terminated status younger than the age of 115.

The Title II Redesign (T2R) system automatically selects and terminates entitlement to beneficiaries meeting the criteria in this section on a monthly basis using Ledger Account File (LAF) T9 and Reason for Suspension or Termination (RFST) of AGETRM.

For more information on this automated process, see SM 03020.380B.

NOTE:T2R does not issue a notice or payments for the T9 AGETRM termination action. In addition, T2R places Medicare for these beneficiaries in an inactive status.

https://secure.ssa.gov/poms.nsf/lnx/0202602578

Edit: In SSA FY 2017 Budget Justification, they state this automated system was specifically intended to reduce fraud opportunities.

p. 182

• Terminate T2 Beneficiaries Age 115 in Long-Term Suspense-Phase 2: In September
2015, we released software for Phase 2, which reduces opportunities to commit fraud by
resuming and redirecting benefits on suspended claims through automation for
beneficiaries that do not have a date of death reported on the Master Beneficiary Record
(MBR) and there are no additional beneficiaries in non-terminated payment status on the
MBR. Phase 2 also supports the recommendation set forth in the Office of the Inspector
General (OIG) audit A-09-09-29111 titled, "Aged Beneficiaries Whose Benefits Have
Been Suspended for Address or Whereabouts Unknown." This project is automating
monthly identification, selection and processing of Title II Master Beneficiary Records
(MBR) with long-term benefit suspensions (seven years or more) for address or
whereabouts unknown. In addition, the beneficiary must be age 115 or older. The
nightly batch processes will manage the selected records. These processes will change
the suspension status (S) to a termination status (T9) with a reason for termination of
"AgeTRM".

Source: https://www.ssa.gov/budget/assets/materials/2017/2017FCJ.pdf

 

[jarlrmai]

I mean it sounds like they just did a raw DB query and didn't check any of the functions that probably account for this

 

[MonkeeSage]

I mean it sounds like they just did a raw DB query and didn't check any of the functions that probably account for this

I wonder how many of the records "with the death field set to FALSE!" also have "suspension status (S)" or "termination status (T9)" as that appears to be the actual relevant information and not just a simple query for "age" and "dead".

 

[JMartJr]

I wonder how many of the records "with the death field set to FALSE!" also have "suspension status (S)" or "termination status (T9)" as that appears to be the actual relevant information and not just a simple query for "age" and "dead".

I suspect something like that. It is similar to the "there are insert number here voters in the roles in insert state here that moved out of state 10 years ago!!!"

Well, yeah, but are they VOTING here? I have lived in several states and I am very sure I never contacted the BOE when I moved away to "unregister." So I'm probably still on the rolls in multiple places. But I only vote here, where I live.

If there are records in the Social Security lists that are out of date, they could be cleaned up but if they are not drawing benefits it's of much less concern and it will not save us anything to do so. If there are records in the database with an erroneous year, that SHOULD be cleaned up but if they are drawing benefits that they are entitled to draw, it is not going to save us any money to do so.

 

[Dave51c]

I wonder how many of the records "with the death field set to FALSE!" also have "suspension status (S)" or "termination status (T9)" as that appears to be the actual relevant information and not just a simple query for "age" and "dead".

Exactly.

Data tells a story and that story is not always obvious in a large system without a full working knowledge of said system. At work we have external (human) monitors who check for outliers caused by poor data entry. I can query a clinical trial to come up with a total number of participant records - but this is too simplistic without further refinement by numbers screened, screen failures, consent, non-consent, participant withdraws, deceased whilst on trial, removal from trial due to adverse effects etc all with timestamps to allow for temporal binning.

Raw data, to be of real world value, often has a set of rules built above it - some are procedural policy rules and others are technical and built (hopefully) into the database itself as constraints - e.g. a date range rule.

 

[jarlrmai]

Well, yeah, but are they VOTING here? I have lived in several states and I am very sure I never contacted the BOE when I moved away to "unregister." So I'm probably still on the rolls in multiple places. But I only vote here, where I live.

This makes me nervous about them "looking into" voting rights and finding "anomalies.."

 

[fizzBuzz]

I'd be more interested in the claim in the title of this thread. I have no doubt that the Social Security system identifies 150 year old people as eligible for payment, but I'm skeptical that that the SSA is actually sending them checks. All it takes is a zero in the birth date field and you're suddenly listed as 150 years old.

I agree with this.

I was programming in Fortran when our company was bought out by ICI, and some British managers were sent over to the USA at the time. The American numerical convention for dates is month/day/year, and the British convention is day/month/year, so after this baffled some of the incomers, I had to rewrite reporting programs to put the month in text form so everyone could understand it.

I had this same issue with an Australian client. It seems like such a trivial issue, but it's not. I loathe dates!

 

[deirdre]

Based on this it seems unlikely that Musk's claim is accurate that deceased old people still receive active benefits.

While i do think Elon needs to stop talking so much, He didnt specifically say they ARE collecting SS. in the video. even on twitter he could just mean the potential of collecting ss. which is true.

most everyone on that twitter list under 65ish are not receiving SS benefits. He's looking at and referring to that list, so obviously he knows not everyone on the list is getting ss benefits.

even people over 65 may not be getting ss benefits if they don't qualify (you need 40 quarters of work paid in before you get retirement ss).


i listened to his Dubai talk, to find out where he said the "99" @NoParty is fixated on... and his brain is super focused on the computer efficiency side of things. Data. and optimizing the data grid to combat waste and fraud. If we have a bunch of people over 150 with a death field of "false" that is bad computering. I think he's just saying, in his normal convoluted way of speaking, that we need to streamline our computer systems.

(that said..watch the OP video but watch the kid and Trump. they are both trying so hard to sit nicely while he rambles. and they are both doing a great job! it's funny. During the Dubai talk i was floored how patient the audience was as he rambled. )

 

[AmberRobot]

Musk apparently later posted a tweet showing what appears to be a spreadsheet with age ranges and counts of individuals in those age ranges. Apparently 150 was just an arbitrary age he used as an example.


Source: https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1891350795452654076

According to the Social Security database, these are the numbers of people in each age bucket with the death field set to FALSE!

Maybe Twilight is real and there are a lot of vampires collecting Social Security

View attachment 77383

And what due diligence did Musk undertake to show that these are valid entries before releasing the information to the public, implying fraud? At the very least, there's only two entries above 230 years. Couldn't these be manually checked to figure out what the issue is? A typo in the birthdate, perhaps?

It's one thing being "transparent", it's another being misleading through the distribution of unvetted statistics.

I hope that those supporting Musk here can at least agree that this kind of communication is at best simply misleading, and potentially far more dangerous in degrading trust in the government agencies that serve the people. Finding fraud and waste is an admirable task, but not if it is executed poorly (dare I say, maliciously?).

He's already admitted openly, from the Oval Office itself, that he won't be correct all the time, so why not take some effort to double check whether he's correct before spreading (mis?)information to the public. Is there a rush here for some reason? It's only the first month of the new administration.

 

[AmberRobot]

I think he's just saying, in his normal convoluted way of speaking, that we need to streamline our computer systems.

If he is unable to communicate properly, it might behoove him to hire someone who can. We shouldn't have to be guessing what his meaning is.

 

[NoParty]

The "99" problem is not at all born of "computer efficiency" or dedication to data.
He pulled it out of his butt, in absence of meaningful data.
It has zero basis in fact, yet is evidently his justification for crushing random Americans' economic security.

 

[deirdre]

and potentially far more dangerous in degrading trust in the government agencies that serve the people.

agree. the degrading trust should focus on the so called over sight committees. One of the main problems with America is it is so friggin big. 450 different agencies, millions of employees (not counting military personnel or postal workers), peter always paying paul to pay some subcontractor for xyz, etc etc.

Can you imagine trying to audit China's books!? oy.

 

[AmberRobot]

agree. the degrading trust should focus on the so called over sight committees. One of the main problems with America is it is so friggin big. 450 different agencies, millions of employees (not counting military personnel or postal workers), peter always paying paul to pay some subcontractor for xyz, etc etc.

Can you imagine trying to audit China's books!? oy.

Most of my arguments here are simply taking issue with an assertion like the government being big is automatically a problem. It's a big country.

I'm not saying it isn't too big, but On what basis do we determine the correct or at least optimal government size?

We should always root out waste and fraud but I reject the notion that simply being large is bad. Please support this contention with reason and evidence.

Maybe the country should break up into smaller countries and simply do away with a federal government. Maybe that's where we are effectively headed with a states' rights philosophy, a reduction in federal workforce, and the mass cancellations of programs and agencies.

 

[deirdre]

I'm not saying it isn't too big, but On what basis do we determine the correct or at least optimal government size?

we cut it in half and see if the country collapses. if it doesnt collapse then we know it can be at least half the size.

Please support this contention with reason and evidence.

im not spending half a day providing 100 links as evidence. Big government is expensive and unwieldy. that's it. Big anything is expensive and unwieldy. <feel free to debunk that.

 

[deirdre]

Maybe the country should break up into smaller countries and simply do away with a federal government. Maybe that's where we are effectively headed with a states' rights philosophy, a reduction in federal workforce, and the mass cancellations of programs and agencies.

thats the entire republican playbook. thats what "republic" in the republican means. but we still need federal highways and a federal military. add: the fda and cdc. (we do need some federal stuff because Rhode Island is way too small to do disease control ontheir own)

 

[AmberRobot]

thats the entire republican playbook. thats what "republic" in the republican means. but we still need federal highways and a federal military. add: the fda and cdc. (we do need some federal stuff because Rhode Island is way too small to do disease control ontheir own)

What is the process for deciding what we need? Should it be a single, unelected individual doing it? Or perhaps legislation through congressional representation of the various states?

 

[deirdre]

Should it be a single, unelected individual doing it?

yes. it should be me.

 

[Ann K]

im not spending half a day providing 100 links as evidence. Big government is expensive and unwieldy. that's it. Big anything is expensive and unwieldy. <feel free to debunk that.

Replace any one government function (take your pick: Medicare, the FAA, SSA, CDC, any number of options) with dozens of separate private profit-making companies, and I think you would quickly find out that big government is by far more efficient ...and cheaper, and more fair... than its alternatives.

 

[deirdre]

Replace any one government function (take your pick: Medicare, the FAA, SSA, CDC, any number of options) with dozens of separate private profit-making companies, and I think you would quickly find out that big government is by far more efficient ...and cheaper, and more fair... than its alternatives.

i'm certainly not advocating for changing the 450 agencies into 2,500 agencies! i absolutely agree that would be worse.

 

[AmberRobot]

we cut it in half and see if the country collapses. if it doesnt collapse then we know it can be at least half the size.

that reminds me of a Calvin and Hobbes cartoon I once saw wherein Calvin asks his father how they know the weight limit on bridges. His father says they build the bridge and then they drive bigger and bigger trucks across it until it breaks. Then they rebuild the bridge.

 

[Minus0]

He's already admitted openly, from the Oval Office itself, that he won't be correct all the time, so why not take some effort to double check whether he's correct before spreading (mis?)information to the public. Is there a rush here for some reason?

Of the 11 most important books to Elon, the only two political and ones were Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged and Adam Smiths Wealth of Nations. The mere fact Atlas shrugged is on his list should tell you a lot about his mindset. It's a cartoonishly simplistic fiction book that constructs a strawman of government and regulation, portraying basically all state action as corrupt, incompetent, or oppressive. It's the sort of book the average teenager finds profound when they go through their libertarian stage, myself included.

The sentiment in Silicon Valley, where Elon is from, embodies this deep antigovernment sentiment. They despise regulations and oversight an Elon in particular has repeatedly faced justified sanctions and fines from regulatory agencies for his fraudulent claims and other illegal actions. This is a man who forced the workers back to the factory, against public health orders, during Covid because he wanted to increase production. The following year when threatening to fire half his staff he praised the Chinese Tesla workers while berating lazy American workers:

Musk has praised Tesla China employees in Shanghai for "burning the 3 am oil" while saying that Americans are "trying to avoid going to work at all."

Thousands of Tesla staff there have been effectively locked in for months, working 12-hour shifts, six days a week. Until recently, many were sleeping on the factory floor as part of a closed-loop system meant to keep the coronavirus out and cars rolling off the production line.
Workers brought in to bring the factory back up to speed are being shuttled between the facility and sleeping quarters — either unused factories or an old military camp — with day- and night-shift workers sharing beds in makeshift dorms.

It's also a man who fired 10,000 Tesla employees without warning then a couple weeks later demanded the board give him a $52 billion bonus payment. The shear audacity of such behaviour in incredible. Again, this is an unserious man with a Messiah complex who views himself as deserving of ultimate authority and despises anyone who gets in his way.

So, in my opinion he absolutely knows what he's doing; it's not a grand mystery. His goal is to destroy trust in government so it's easier to dismantle. He wants the world of Ayn Rand and if releasing misinformation helps him achieve those aims, he's going to do it. The endless track record of spreading blatant lies about the capacities of his various companies, deep state conspiracies, or even irrelevant things like his supposed video game prowess (a bizarre thing to lie about other than a narcissistic need for perceived supremacy in all domains) further confirm it. If it walks like a duck…

Ironically, Adam Smith strongly warns about the dangers of assigning too much power to a man who believes he is capable of identifying and solving problems. Someone with that disposition is unfit to govern because the risk of them turning into a tyrant is too high. Another relevant quote from Smith regarding the dangers of putting rich businessman in charge of governance:

To widen the market and to narrow the competition, is always the interest of the dealers [businessman]…The proposal of any new law or regulation of commerce which comes from this order, ought always to be listened to with great precaution, and ought never to be adopted till after having been long and carefully examined, not only with the most scrupulous, but with the most suspicious attention. It comes from an order of men, whose interest is never exactly the same with that of the public, who have generally an interest to deceive and even oppress the public, and who accordingly have, upon many occasions, both deceived and oppressed it.

The Wealth Of Nations, Book I, Chapter XI, Conclusion of the Chapter, p.267, para. 10.

But hey, perhaps I'm the one out of touch. Maybe he has had an unlikely transformation of character while k-holing on his horse tranquilizer addiction and is now truly acting with the best of intentions and integrity (even though the evidence suggests ketamine addiction produces the opposite dissociative states). It seems wildly unlikely, but I certainly hope so. Regardless, I'm in favour of an overhaul and improved efficiency of outdated government systems, but I certainly don't trust Elon to be the one in charge of that process.

 

[AmberRobot]

I would argue that Elon is not "from" Silicon Valley. And I know many, many people in Silicon Valley who do not have "deep antigovernment sentiment", though I'll grant you that none of them are billionaires.

 

[Gary C]

Most of my arguments here are simply taking issue with an assertion like the government being big is automatically a problem. It's a big country.

I'm not saying it isn't too big, but On what basis do we determine the correct or at least optimal government size?

We should always root out waste and fraud but I reject the notion that simply being large is bad. Please support this contention with reason and evidence.

Maybe the country should break up into smaller countries and simply do away with a federal government. Maybe that's where we are effectively headed with a states' rights philosophy, a reduction in federal workforce, and the mass cancellations of programs and agencies.

As others have pointed out, it's a big country and a reasonably large government is to be expected. As a former registered Republican, I agreed it was too big and too inefficient and in need of reform. It eventually dawned on me that the unmentioned flaw in the Right's crusade against "big government" is that there is no bright line. An optimal size can never be determined as the proper functions of government cannot be agreed upon. The program that keeps the heat turned on for your elderly neighbor looks like waste to a segment of politicians and the voters who support them.

The GOP play book since the 1980s has been simple and effective. Holding Congressional hearings, collecting data, examining evidence, and revising laws under which agencies operate takes time and a great deal of effort. You can skip all that and simply campaign against big/oppressive/wasteful government. You get the same number of votes and can devote your time to raising money.

An added benefit is limited opposition. If you try to cut a program or agency, those who benefit from it will, rightly or wrongly, mount some level of opposition. This is where spending caps and across-the-board reductions have primarily benefited the Right. When the GOP has been out of power, they've made a huge deal of deficits and through such maneuvers as Obama-era sequestration, they've established spending caps but left the dirty work of finding things to cut to the Democrats. This allows the GOP to gain the support for 'fighting waste' while leaving the opposition to take the blame for any cuts that rouse public ire.

I saw some of this in practice as a contractor supporting modernization programs at the IRS. Berating an agency's staff for inefficiency at the same time as you cut its modernization budget is hypocritical but perversely effective. The worse service gets, the more support you get for "fighting the bureaucracy." The fact that you were instrumental in making service worse is too much nuance for the modern media environment.

Musk's brand of fatuous libertarianism dovetails nicely with these practices. He's gotten away with 'move fast and break things' because he pushed out the founders of the companies he runs and replaced their boards with supporters. If Tesla sales drop, only the company and it's shareholders suffer. Breaking the United States Government will have far more dire consequences.

I appologize for the rant. Feel free to move it to off-topic.