Comment by jdsleppy
5 days ago
Apparently the 150 year old Social Security recipients were due to a COBOL quirk where the zero datetime is 1875. Interesting, but not fraud.
5 days ago
Apparently the 150 year old Social Security recipients were due to a COBOL quirk where the zero datetime is 1875. Interesting, but not fraud.
That doesn't hold up because there are 200 year old people as well, and apparently millions of 100-year olds. I'm not saying all of it is fraud but incompetence leading to waste would not be surprising.
It sounds like there are several million in the db with those ages and without death records, but it also sounds like the vast majority are NOT collecting paychecks either. Also unclear how many of those who are collecting involve money going to living spouses or whatever other rules exist.
https://xcancel.com/ThatsMauvelous/status/189135619250239902...
Too late to edit, but I've learned this is not necessarily true (but could be a default date used by the SS code in particular). Sorry for spreading rumors.
> COBOL quirk where the zero datetime is 1875
This is a piece of misinformation coming from Twitter/X post.
20 may 1875 is the reference date of ISO 8601:2004.
You don't need to trust me on that, you can just go check the standard.
Or you can claim that it's misinformation too. Up to you.
Wouldn't you pause for a moment to consider how a 2004 standard is relevant to a COBOL codebase that is probably more than 50 years old at this point?
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