What happens when the US runs out of SSNs? - eviltoast

SSN numbers are good for 999,999,999 people alive or dead. At some point the US will hit that, right? Do we start reusing numbers? Sounds like a disaster waiting to happen.

  • paddirn@lemmy.world
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    1 month ago

    SSN’s are also given out to immigrants as well though, so that’s a whole other population of people outside of just natural born citizens to account for. The US awards around one million green cards annually, though I don’t know what the historical numbers are.

    • BigDanishGuy@sh.itjust.works
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      1 month ago

      SSN’s are also given out to immigrants as well though

      Oh snap! Thanks for bringing that up. Adding another million each year, and assuming a constant green card rate since before WW2(!), adds another 88 million spent SSNs. With an additional million green cards annually, that makes the calculation (1000-510.3-88)x10^6 SSNs /4.695 x 10^6 SSNs/year = 85.6 years.

      So the US has until about the end of the century to figure it out.

          • BigDanishGuy@sh.itjust.works
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            1 month ago

            Meh, why do today what you can put off until it’s someone else’s problem?

            It’s not even like you leave for future you, that guy hates you already^1 you leave it for someone entirely unknown. They won’t even know who to blame.

            ^1 Shayne Smith banned from karate reference.

            Bummer, superscript doesn’t work in any client, does it work for anybody else? Come to think about it, how stupid am I, I’ve used ^ extensively in this fucking thread smh