Remember when Elon Musk and President Donald Trump were saying that tens of millions of dead people received Social Security benefits?

It was pretty clear from the outset that this claim, which implied that the Social Security Administration could save hundreds of billions of dollars a year just by removing the deceased from its rolls, was false.

As Social Security’s Office of the Inspector General had detailed in a series of reports over the previous decade, tens of millions of centenarians are not marked as dead in Social Security’s Numident file of everyone who has ever been issued a Social Security number — mostly because they died before the current automated death-reporting system was installed — but the number receiving benefits was, as of 2020, a perfectly reasonable 44,000, about half the estimated number of people that old in the U.S.

Lee Dudek, the midlevel Social Security employee elevated to acting commissioner by Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency, acknowledged as much in March. But he also said the agency was making “significant progress in identifying and correcting beneficiary records of people 100 years old or older,” encouraging hopes that the death patrol might still have a noticeable effect on Social Security rolls.

Well I just looked and couldn’t see any effect. Instead, the number of retired-worker Social Security beneficiaries 99 and older rose 2,745 from mid-2024 to mid-2025, the biggest such gain in five years. More noteworthy, the total number of Social Security Old-Age and Survivors Insurance program beneficiaries — mostly retired workers but also their spouses, dependents and survivors — is up 1.7 million from January through August, more than its full-year gain in 2024.

This year’s sudden acceleration in beneficiary growth is even more striking when you look at percentage changes.

The decline after March 2020 was due to COVID-19, which over the past five years or so has killed 848,503 Americans ages 62 (the youngest age one can claim Social Security retirement benefits) and older, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. I mention this because it shows what the impact of removing hundreds of thousands of people from the Social Security rolls looks like. A study this year by four economists found that premature deaths caused by the pandemic saved Social Security $156 billion.

This year’s rise in beneficiaries is driven not by a sudden decline in mortality but by a 12% increase in new Old-Age and Survivors Insurance beneficiary awards. Average benefits paid are also up, by 4.5%, and the resulting increase in Social Security outlays is a main reason that federal spending is up nearly 9% since Trump took office despite canceled grants and programs, layoffs and a government shutdown. Far from discovering and correcting massive waste at Social Security, Musk has left behind and Trump has continued to preside over big spending increases.

That’s ironic. It would be even more ironic if this year’s increase in Social Security claims were Musk and Trump’s fault, and there is a theory going around to that effect. After looking into the numbers, my sense is that bipartisan legislation signed into law by President Joe Biden on Jan. 5 and widely condemned by retirement-policy experts as “terrible” has been a much bigger driver of the increased claims.

The Trump-and-Musk-are-to-blame theory is that the chaos surrounding Musk’s temporary Social Security takeover, coupled with general unease about the future of the program, has led Americans to rush to file for benefits this year while there are still some to be had. There is some evidence for this: In a June AARP poll, 12% of the 50-and-older respondents said that in the past year they had “considered claiming or decided to claim” benefits earlier than previously planned, with many citing concerns about Social Security’s viability and its Musk-exacerbated customer-service problems.

“Earlier than planned” is hard to capture in the Social Security statistics, but we can look at the number of people and share of the population claiming retirement benefits at 62, 63 and 64. It’s definitely up, but (1) the increase so far is quite small and (2) the inflection point after years of declines seems to have come in 2023 or 2024, not this year.

More people claiming Social Security in their early 60s won’t have a negative long-term impact on the program’s finances because benefits are reduced with each year of claiming benefits before age 70. Those reduced benefits could be a problem for the early claimants, though, especially because in the past these have tended to be people of modest means who retired involuntarily because they couldn’t find a job or their work had become too physically demanding.

The recent increases in Social Security filings by 62-year-olds have been sharpest among those with high earnings, according to a Social Security Administration analysis from April (which was taken offline by the agency but has been preserved by the Wayback Machine), a trend that I don’t have a good explanation for although the numbers of people involved are probably so small that maybe I don’t need one.

According to that same April analysis, the biggest recent percentage increases in new Social Security claims have been among people 71 and older with low Social Security earnings. That’s where the new Biden-signed law with the Orwellian name Social Security Fairness Act comes in. In short it’s a repeal of earlier laws that tried to equalize overall retirement payouts between (1) those who worked primarily in state and local government jobs not covered by Social Security but also had some Social Security earnings, and (2) those who had only Social Security earnings.

Now a few million former state and local government workers and their spouses and widow(er)s will receive bigger retirement payouts than people with identical earnings that were covered entirely by Social Security, with the resulting increase in benefits the main reason the trustees of the Old-Age and Survivors Insurance and Disability Insurance trust funds this year moved up the date when the funds are expected to run out and Social Security beneficiaries start receiving reduced payments from 2035 to 2034. Great work, everybody!

Most of the beneficiaries of this windfall were already receiving Social Security and are now simply receiving higher monthly payouts. Because the law was retroactive to 2024, they also received one-time retroactive payments that, as my Bloomberg Opinion colleague Jonathan Levin wrote in May, helped explain a lot of the US economy’s resilience over what might otherwise have been a difficult spring. But there were also Fairness Act beneficiaries who now for the first time had reason to apply for Social Security, a condition most prevalent among spouses and widow(er)s of former state and local government workers.

As of mid-April, the Social Security Administration was reporting that it had processed 156,528 new claims related to the Social Security Fairness Act. My request for updated numbers has so far gone unanswered (the government is shut down, after all), but assuming that the claims kept coming in at a steadily slowing pace through the end of August got me to an estimate of nearly 325,000, or about three quarters of the overall increase in new Old-Age and Survivors Insurance benefits awarded through August compared with the period a year earlier. More-timely data on retirement insurance applications through September shows that since May they’ve subsided to levels similar to last year and 2023.

Justin Fox is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering business, economics and other topics involving charts. A former editorial director of the Harvard Business Review, he is author of “The Myth of the Rational Market.”

 

Donald Trump appears to have finally fallen out of love with Vladimir Putin, which is good news, long time coming.

If you cut through all of the back-and-forth over the past week regarding the war in Ukraine, the central issue remains the same. And unresolved.

Putin invaded a sovereign nation. That country fought back harder than the Russian dictator predicted, resulting in a quagmire that over time has weakened Putin. That weakness, as finally perceived by an American president who admires only strength, explains the current Trumpian disaffection better than what actually should have caused Trump never to fall in love in the first place: Putin’s desire to re-create as much as possible of the Soviet Union, whatever the cost both to democracy and to human life, both Ukrainian and Russian.

Still, Trump knows how to exploit weakness better than most. So if the breakup is serious, let’s hope he finally gets behind Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who wryly observed this week that Putin wants the total occupation of Ukraine, which is exactly what he wanted when the Russian tanks rolled into Ukraine in February 2022 as part of what Putin said at the time was a “special military operation.” Putin is not about to want something different; the question for this U.S. administration is when and how he is going to be convinced that Trump will prevent him from getting it.

Zelenskyy, who has greatly improved his Trump-flattering skills in recent days, clearly sees the opportunity, comparing Putin’s weakness to that of Hamas in a part of the world where Trump was able to broker at least a tentative peace. Trump likes to see himself as peace-deal-maker not just par excellence but on a global roll, and the more Zelenskyy can play into that, the better for Ukraine. If we were Zelenskyy advisers able to whisper in Trump’s ear, we would just keep repeating, “Putin is weak. Putin is weak. Putin is weak,” until we saw the cogs finally start to move.

It might take a while; Trump has been convinced for so many years of the personal utility of the man’s strength. But convincing him otherwise still is the Lord’s work.

Oil sanctions are a good idea, long time coming. So is talking about sending Tomahawk missiles to Ukraine. Former Chicago mayor and ambassador Rahm Emanuel made the point to us the other day that the Gaza ceasefire came about in no small measure because both ordinary Israeli and Palestinian people, weary of war, pressured leaders to make a deal those leaders did not really want to make. To what degree Putin is open to such domestic pressure is debatable, but it is worth the effort. Oil sanctions will hit Russia’s economy, big time.

Reasonable people know, and we think Zelenskyy now understands, that long wars typically don’t end with one side getting everything and, as the European nations generally have agreed, the right starting point for negotiations is the situation on the ground now in terms of who controls what. A starting point, which means nothing beyond and certainly less. But the main thing is that Putin has to stand up and acknowledge Ukraine’s right to exist in peace.

On Thursday, Putin told reporters that “no self-respecting country ever does anything under pressure.”

What weak rhetoric. Ratcheting up the pressure on the pathetic Putin will be the only way this war ends.

— The Chicago Tribune

Timberwolves coach Chris Finch came into the locker room after Minnesota’s loss to Denver on Monday and challenged a handful of players as to what they bring to the team’s defense.

Publicly, he called out Jaden McDaniels and Rudy Gobert.

“We need more from our All-Defensive guys to set the tone,” Finch said. “Jaden’s gotta be better at the point of attack, into his guy a little bit more. Rudy’s gotta challenge more stuff at the rim.”

Because, as of now, it’s not enough.

Minnesota was in control Monday night at Target Center, leading Denver by eight at the break. Then came the fateful third frame.

Denver exploded for 45 points, 23 of which came from Jamal Murray. The Nuggets shot 67% from the field in the quarter, including 63% from distance, all while not committing a turnover.

“No defense. Nothing at the rim. Kept turning corners on us, getting downhill,” Finch said. “We didn’t break off, we didn’t challenge. Too comfortable in the paint and the heart of the defense.”

Just another day in Minnesota.

What was the most ferocious defense in the NBA is now awfully tame. For proof, look no further than Murray, who was frustrated by Minnesota’s defensive tenacity to the point of throwing objects onto the court during Game 2 of the Western Conference semifinals in 2024.

On Monday, he was able to do whatever he wanted, whenever he wanted. As was Nikola Jokic. Their dominance was eerily reminiscent to that of Luka Doncic against the Wolves in Los Angeles just three days prior.

Minnesota Timberwolves center Rudy Gobert (27), center Naz Reid (11), guard Anthony Edwards (5), guard Rob Dillingham (4) and guard Mike Conley (10) watch play during the second half of an NBA basketball game against the Denver Nuggets, Monday, Oct. 27, 2025, in Minneapolis. (AP Photo/Abbie Parr)

Minnesota doesn’t have anything defensively for the game’s best at the moment – or anyone else, for that matter. Through four games, the Wolves sport the fourth-worst defense in basketball at 119.8 points allowed per 100 possessions.

For reference, that number was 108.4 during the 2023-24 season. The defense has been in a slow decline since that point. It got incrementally worse last season. And, despite a commitment to re-establishing defensive dominance in training camp, the Wolves have fallen off a cliff on that end through four games this season.

Mike Conley said guys are “playing hard” but cited “too many breakdowns” as a reason for the struggles. Miscommunications ran rampant Monday, which led to a number of open looks for the Nuggets.

“We have to do things as a unit. All five guys have to be in the same mindset and connected when we do things. We kind of got too many rogue situations going on and guys not being on the weak side early enough. Game plan stuff,” Conley said. “It’s just a combination of a lot of things that’s happening.”

First and foremost, Conley said it comes down to guys taking on challenges – to not get beat, to not need to rely on help defense. Miscommunication can be covered up by sheer effort.

“That’s who we used to be,” Conley said, “and we need to get back to that.”

But when Minnesota was that, it had guys like Kyle Anderson and Nickeil Alexander-Walker in the rotation. The Wolves’ current personnel isn’t as deeply steeped in defensive ability. That’s especially true when Anthony Edwards and Jaylen Clark are out with injuries.

Perhaps that’s why Finch insists he gets more out of McDaniels and Gobert, who are handsomely compensated specifically for their defensive efforts.

“It starts with us. I think we are a defensive-minded team, and whether it’s me inside or Jaden on the wing, I think a lot of the mindset that we try to put into our team starts with us,” Gobert said. “When Jaden and whoever is guarding the ball is pressuring the ball, and when I’m being a monster in the paint, it sets the tone for everybody else.”

But that hasn’t been the case yet this season. Minnesota’s ball pressure has left much to be desired. Opponent’s screen games have created ample separation to free up shot opportunities. Again, the fix is more tenacious on-ball pressure.

“Us on the ball have got to be more sticky. I think we’re just not being as physical as we can be,” Conley said. “I think we can fight over it. Guys can not get screened. We’ve done it. There’s no excuse for it. As a group, we have to be more aggressive on the ball … not just get into a dance with (the ball handler), but trying to lead the dance a little bit, being physical and aggressive like we can be.”

McDaniels and Clark lead the charge on that front, when McDaniels is playing to the defensive level at which he’s capable. He feels as though he’s playing defense the same way he always has.

“But it’s obviously not working,” McDaniels said.

Not for him, not for the team – whose once-proud defensive identity is slowly fading into the abyss. Sure, you don’t want to panic after just four games, but Finch admitted he’s “very concerned about it.”

“We have been extremely inconsistent defensively,” Finch said.

Which, Conley admitted, is “confusing.” Minnesota has enough defenders to guard the ball. It has continuity from last season. It has no reason to not get stops.

“I don’t think we’re looking up like, ‘Man, we can’t guard anybody.’ It’s just like, ‘Why didn’t we do this? Why didn’t we try to block that? Why didn’t you get back on defense? Why did you leave him open in the corner?’” Conley said. “It’s just kind of more baffling than it is a real issue. Nonetheless, it’s something that we have to correct.”

Especially, Finch noted, if they want to win, Conley said it starts with accountability. Finch got that ball rolling postgame Monday. Now Conley said it’s on everyone to respond.

“It’s got to be what matters more than anything, more than how many points we score or anything else going on,” Gobert said of getting stops. “I think that’s the team we need to be.”

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Early voting is underway. City Limits has the details on where the candidates stand on rent stabilization, affordable housing production, zoning reform, and NYCHA.

Assemblymember Zohran Mamdani, former Gov. Andrew Cuomo, and Guardian Angels found Curtis Sliwa. (Ron Adar / Shutterstock.com)

After months of campaigning and two heated debates, early voting for New York City mayor is underway.

Housing has taken a central role in the campaign since the primary. Renters, who make up a majority of New Yorkers, have been at the center of the policy debate. Over half of New York renters are rent-burdened, meaning they pay more than 30 percent of their income in rent.

“We see that, especially in the lowest income households, that is where the rent burden is the heaviest,” said Chris Walters, senior land use policy associate at the Association for Neighborhood and Housing Development. “But I think this is something that transcends a lot of voters’ and people’s experiences in New York.”

City Limits reviewed the candidates’ plans and watched the debates to tell you where they stand on four key issues: freezing the rent, housing production, zoning reform, and public housing.

The Rent Guidelines Board meeting in 2024 at Hunter College in Manhattan. (Adi Talwar/City Limits)

Freezing the rent

The mayor appoints nine members of the city’s Rent Guidelines Board (RBG). Each year, its members take into account costs for landlords and incomes for renters and set the allowable rent increases for the city’s 2 million rent stabilized tenants. 

The mayoral candidates disagree about how they would use the RGB:  

Zohran Mamdani captured the issue early in the campaign, promising a four year rent freeze for rent-stabilized apartments—a move he said will provide relief to millions of New Yorkers who have a median income of $60,000, while finding other ways to help some rent stabilized buildings in distress because of high insurance costs and high property taxes. He says he can appoint a Rent Guidelines Board that will freeze the rent, saying that the data has justified rent freezes in the past. Critics have said that the RGB is an independent body, and the New York Post reported Friday that Mayor Eric Adams can still appoint members to new terms before he leaves office, which could jeopardize Mamdani’s chances of making a rent freeze happen in year one. 

Andrew Cuomo has said that Mamdani’s rent freeze proposal is not possible, and that it will defund buildings that need higher rents in order to keep up with repairs. He’s also campaigned on a proposal to means-test rent stabilized housing, which would require new rent stabilized leaseholders to have annual incomes so that they are paying at least 30 percent of their earnings in rent.

Curtis Sliwa wants to get empty rent stabilized units back in use, calling for a vacancy tax on large landlords who he says are holding units off the market (which some building owners say is due to costly repair needs that too-low regulated rents don’t cover). The number of vacant rent stabilized units is disputed, but one recent estimate puts it at 26,000. Sliwa’s website also calls for repealing the 2019 rent laws that increased tenant protections and limited the ways landlords could increase rent or deregulate rent stabilized units (though that’s something state lawmakers would have to take on).

Tenants have been raising the alarm for years about how their income can’t keep up with rising rents, but advocacy groups have also begun to draw attention to significant financial distress in the city’s affordable housing stock.

“We know that people are rent burdened in New York. It’s not very different in the rent stabilized stock,” said the New York Housing Conference’s Executive Director Rachel Fee. “We need to think about additional solutions for these buildings that are in distress.” 

Affordable apartments under construction in Brooklyn in 2020. (Adi Talwar/City Limits)

Building new affordable housing

With available apartments at a record low, there isn’t enough housing to go around in New York. At the lowest income, there are even fewer options: just 0.4 percent of apartments priced below $1,100 were vacant in 2023.

“If we want to bring rents down, we need to build more. We need to build more at every income level,” said Fee.

Mamdani wants to triple affordable housing production and build 200,000 “truly affordable,” union-built apartments. At Thursday’s debate he said he wants those units “built with the median household income in mind, which is $70,000 for a family of four.” He has also called for fully funding the city’s Department of Housing, Preservation, and Development (HPD), to build housing faster and take advantage of programs that create low income apartments for seniors and extremely low income New Yorkers. His plan would require more funding for housing development, which he hopes to get from raising taxes, which would require collaborating with the state legislature and the governor.

Cuomo has called for building 500,000 units of housing over 10 years, two thirds of which he says will be affordable to low- and moderate-income New Yorkers. He has championed his experience as U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) secretary and building infrastructure, saying that he wants to work with private developers, nonprofits, and unions to start a building boom on thousands of sites right away, including city-owned properties. He has also called for shakeups at HPD to make the organization more efficient and get housing built faster.

Sliwa’s plan calls for prioritizing housing for seniors and working families instead of “corporate developments.” He has also called for reforming New York City’s property tax system to lower the burden on multi-family housing, and for protecting homeownership and tax increases on working class and senior homeowners. He wants to convert more office spaces to residential, arguing that development should not overburden existing infrastructure, particularly in the outer boroughs. He has not set a housing production goal.

On HPD, Fee added: “I agree that we need reforms at the agency, and I also think we need to add staff if we’re increasing production.”

Changing zoning

Mayor Eric Adams’ City of Yes zoning reform, passed in December 2024, was designed to build “a little more housing in every neighborhood,” by increasing residential density across the city, especially near transit. While it faced pushback in many neighborhoods, experts suggest it will help boost the supply of housing and temper rising rents. This election, voters are also being asked to weigh in on four ballot measures that seek to modify the process for permitting new housing. You can read more about the ballot measures here.

Mamdani has called for comprehensive planning that would increase zoning capacity, eliminate parking minimums, build near transit, and fast-track review for affordable housing. He has not taken a position on the ballot measures, which would reduce some of the City Council’s power over land use decisions. But in a June candidate questionnaire from the Citizens Budget Commission, he said he wants to “move away from member deference”—when the Council defers to the vote of the local member on projects in their district—in favor of citywide planning that “will allow Council Members to set long term goals for their districts instead of only weighing in” when specific projects trigger public review. 

Cuomo has called for accelerated residential development in Midtown South (which was recently rezoned to allow for it), manufacturing districts, and other places. He has also called for the expansion of transfer of development rights, which lets owners sell off excess zoning floor area to neighboring lots. He has said that he supports the ballot measures that will fast track affordable housing and create a new review board that can override the Council’s decisions on development projects.

Sliwa has called for repealing the City of Yes and focusing on local control over development. He does not support the housing-related ballot measures. He has called for increasing office to residential conversions in Manhattan to create new housing, an approach that he says will not overburden the residential neighborhoods in the outer boroughs.

New York’s housing groups are split on the housing ballot proposals. The City Council is firmly opposed, with lawmakers saying it would limit their ability to negotiate neighborhood benefits from developers. NY Tenants PAC said in a statement Monday that the ballot measures will “disempower working class tenants and will accelerate displacement.”

But other housing advocacy groups say it will help empower the next mayor to tackle the housing crisis by making it easier for city agencies to build affordable housing, particularly in neighborhoods where local opposition makes it politically impossible.

“Voters now have a unique opportunity to leverage the power in their own hands to equip the city government with the tools we need to actually solve this problem,” said Amit Singh Bagga who heads the Yes on Affordable Housing campaign and PAC supporting the measures.

Some, like the Association for Neighborhood and Housing Development have taken a middle road, endorsing ballot measure two, which creates a fast track for 100 percent affordable housing projects and affordable housing projects in areas of the city that have produced the least. They declined to weigh in on the others. 

“For our interest of increasing the supply of affordable housing and the equitable distribution, we feel like two is the one that speaks most directly to that,” said Walters.

NYCHA’s Claremont Village in the Bronx. (Adi Talwar/City Limits)

Helping NYCHA

NYCHA, home to almost 400,000 New Yorkers, has a $78 billion backlog of repairs after decades of federal disinvestment. 

Some developments are undergoing comprehensive repairs by converting them from the federal Section 9 program to Section 8 through the city’s PACT and Preservation Trust programs, which you can read more about here.

Mamdani has pledged to double the city’s capital investment in major renovations for NYCHA, and he wants to push Albany to invest more. He has also called for activating underutilized storage areas on NYCHA campuses, like parking lots, for affordable housing development. He has not weighed in on converting NYCHA to private management under the PACT program.

Cuomo has called for an additional $500 million in city capital funding for NYCHA (a 75 percent increase). He called for identifying sites suitable for redevelopment for more affordable and workforce housing, or retail and mixed use development. He also proposed investing in management changes to improve safety, governance, and open space. He wants to accelerate conversion projects through PACT and the Trust, while calling for increased resources for Section 9 at campuses where conversion is not a good fit.

Curtis Sliwa has called for filling NYCHA’s 6,000 vacant units. He has not weighed in on new development on NYCHA land or converting public housing under the PACT or Trust.

Even after a NYCHA building partially collapsed in the Bronx earlier this month, NYCHA has gotten little attention in the mayoral race.

“I actually think it’s really deplorable,” Sharon Stergis, a resident at NYCHA’s Riis Houses on the Lower East Side, said of the scant focus on public housing. “I also think that it’s the way it is basically, you know—that’s how it’s been.”

To reach the reporter behind this story, contact Patrick@citylimits.org. To reach the editor, contact Jeanmarie@citylimits.org

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