The Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) May 23 announced that it has finally marked 12.3 million Social Security number holders — folks whose birth dates peg them as over 120 years old — as deceased. That’s right, 12.3 million deceased recipients were listed as “alive” in the Social Security Administration’s (SSA) creaky, Constitution-insulting redistribution-of-wealth database. Some 124,130 of them were listed as between the ages of 160 and 169, making their birthday cakes rather…dangerous, of course.
The cleanup exposes not just bureaucratic incompetence but the rotten core of a system that’s been fleecing Americans for nearly a century – the core of a constitutionally dubious system mandated on Americans, falsely sold as a safety net, stuffed with IOUs, and acting as a financially and morally bankrupt Ponzi scheme from the very first year it paid out.
It started as a Marxist redistribution of wealth scheme that Franklin Delano Roosevelt strong-armed into existence and kept alive by threatening to subvert the very structure of the Supreme Court, and it has morphed into a “Pay Beyond Death” horror show.
As American Greatness reports:
“In March, the Social Security Administration (SSA) issued a statement saying:
‘The data reported in the media represent people who do not have a date of death associated with their record. While these people may not be receiving benefits, it is important for the agency to maintain accurate and complete records.’
The SSA database, which tracks the numbers issued, has existed since 1936 and was flagged during a review in March of 2015 that discovered that the death records had not been updated for 6.5 million individuals over the age of 112, all of who (sic) were presumed to be deceased.”
That is nearly 10 percent of the total Social Security recipient population, which in February 2024 stood at approximately 67 million people, and which, by April of this year, had risen to approximately 73.9 million beneficiaries, according to the Pew Research Center.
As Georgia Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene (R) announced on X, the SSA’s rolls included 7.2 million people who’d be 120 to 139 years old, 4.8 million aged 140 to 159, and that well-preserved Over-160 Club.
The SSA’s own policy, in place since September 2015, halts payments to anyone over 115, yet the database remained a mess, with 18.9 million records of pre-1920 births untouched as late as July 2024, per the SSA’s inspector general. Why? The agency claimed updating the system would cost $9 million—too steep for an outfit that paid out $8.6 trillion in benefits, with $72 billion deemed “improper,” in 2023 alone.
This isn’t just sloppiness; it’s a symptom of a deeper rot, because, from its inception, Social Security has been a house of cards, propped up by coercion and deceit.
In 2013, Gary Gilles noted for the Mises Institute that it was a Ponzi scheme (using current workers to pay the so-called “retirement savings accounts” of the retired) from the start:
“After Social Security’s creation, those in or near retirement got benefits far exceeding their costs (Ida Mae Fuller, the first Social Security recipient, got 462 times what she and her employer together paid in ‘contributions’). Those benefits in excess of their taxes paid inherently forced future Americans to pick up the tab for the difference.”
And, of course, the “creation” of Social Security was an insult to the Founders, as in 1935, Franklin Delano Roosevelt pushed the Social Security Act through Congress, claiming it would secure Americans’ retirement – something no government is supposed to do and something which it cannot do.
Related: Trump: “‘THE ONE, BIG, BEAUTIFUL BILL’ has PASSED the House!”
The Founders tried to limit the extent to which the US government would engage in this kind of theft and power-grab. They strictly limited the central government’s reach, granting no enumerated power for Congress to seize our earnings and hold the loot in a so-called “retirement” account managed by the feds.
And, like us, many Americans of that era might have asked, “If this is so great, can I choose to be left out of it?”
Of course, the answer was, and always has been: NO.
In 1937, the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) smelled the rat and signaled it might strike down the Act as unconstitutional. FDR didn’t flinch. He threatened to pack the Court, proposing to add justices until he got his way—a move so brazen it prompted the justices to back down. The Court’s capitulation cemented Social Security’s place, but it couldn’t hide the program’s fatal flaw: it’s a Ponzi scheme, pure and simple.
So, todays stunning cadre of 160-year-old Social Security Roster Members (perhaps to be made a special distinction on some government monument) is just another in a long line of infuriating facets on this fake and corrupt government gem.
The mandated fraud of Social Security depends on younger workers paying in to cover current retirees, with the promise that future generations will do the same. It’s a pyramid, not a pension, and like all such schemes, it teeters on the edge of collapse. The system’s architects knew this, banking on perpetual population growth and economic expansion to keep the plates spinning. But with birth rates declining and lifespans lengthening, the math doesn’t add up. In 1960, five workers supported each retiree; today, it’s fewer than three, and by 2035, the SSA projects the trust fund will be insolvent.
Of course, technically, since each person’s snatched-up money isn’t really there, and it’s being paid by other people, the system already is insolvent, based on its political creators’ original claims.
The 12.3 million “living dead” in the SSA’s database only amplify the absurdity. These records, some tied to people born before the Civil War, weren’t just oversights; they were potential conduits for fraud. While the SSA insists “almost none” of these number holders were receiving benefits, the lack of death dates raises red flags, in January, FoxNews reported that the U.S. Treasury recouped $31 million in improper payments to deceased individuals in early 2025, with estimates of hundreds of millions more to recover. And then there’s the darker speculation: outdated Social Security numbers could be exploited for voter fraud…
Which seems to be in line with the fraud of the whole system, of the whole “government is here to protect you, so hand over your cash, or else” fraud.
Perhaps if enough younger people ask to be let alone, politicians will respond, will abide by their Constitution, and end this mummified monster.
But that is unlikely.
Instead, just like the unnaturally high ages of the people discovered by DOGE, Social Security likely will continue to fake it for years to come, with the political elite telling us they are saving for OUR retirements.
How about they let us do that and stop lying to us?
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