Please turn on JavaScript

Brooks Wilson's Economics Blog: The Dead: Voting and Spending

Friday, May 15, 2009

The Dead: Voting and Spending

(HT Drudge) In Chicago, the dead vote (Peter Carlson.  "Another Race To the Finish," Washington Post, November 17, 2000); throughout the country,they receive stimulus checks ("Dead People Get Stimulus Checks," Fox News, May 14, 2009). 
The Social Security Administration, which sent out 52 million checks, says that some of those checks mistakenly went to dead people because the agency had no record of their death. That amounts to between 8,000 and 10,000 checks for millions of dollars...

The feds blame a rushed schedule, because all the checks have to be cut by June. The strange thing is, some of the checks were made out to people...who were never even part of the Social Security system.


If some of the checks are cashed, will they provide a fiscal stimulus?

2 comments:

  1. This shows how unorganized our system can be, we can't expect perfection from a "system" that makes tons of mistakes!
    -Paula Solano

    ReplyDelete
  2. Dead man voting!!! This is how political parties squeeze out just enough votes to win elections. Registered votes from the deceased as well as illegal aliens impact too many close elections. The fact that our tax dollars are becoming transfers in kind to those who are dead or have never contributed to social security is absurd. What mistakes are my children going to have to pay for?

    ReplyDelete