“You wake up one day and discover you’re dead,” Johnson told me. “It’s been truly surreal.”

That’s the biggest difference — my deceased guy turns out to be very much alive. Musk is contending that hordes of dead people are listed as alive in the Social Security databases, and are fraudulently still drawing benefits (which the Social Security director disputes).

Johnson is 82 and still kicking. Yet sometime last month, someone or something led Social Security to both tag him as dead and start clawing back his benefits.

Archived copies of the article:

  • hemmes@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    1
    ·
    19 days ago

    This is just fuckin’ sad.

    Conservatives get so up in arms about folks “taking advantage” of the system. When the reality is that there’s always going to be someone taking advantage of anything that can be taken advantage of. The percentage of the system being taken advantage of pales in comparison to those it truly helps. To cut off, or otherwise make difficult, the benefits to those that truly need it is horrendous, inhumane, cruel, and, to say the least, shortsighted.

    To anyone in support of this and squaring it away with something like “it serves them right” - do something with that cold, dead brain of yours like thinking just a little bit.