Social Security makes it official: No COLA in 2010

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20091015/ap_on_bi_ge/us_social_security_cola;_ylt=AvoLM33N1yCk27dnocRFutJ

By STEPHEN OHLEMACHER, Associated Press Writer Stephen Ohlemacher, Associated Press Writer – 1 min ago

WASHINGTON – The Social Security Administration says there will be no cost of living increase next year for more than 50 million Social Security recipients, the first year without a raise since automatic adjustments were adopted in 1975.

Blame falling consumer prices. By law, the cost of living adjustments are pegged to inflation, which is negative this year because of lower energy costs. Social Security payments, however, cannot go down.

Thursday's announcement comes a day after President Barack Obama called for a second round of $250 stimulus payments for seniors, veterans, retired railroad workers and people with disabilities.

The payments would match the ones issued to seniors earlier this year as part of the government's economic recovery package.

Read more: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20091015/ap_on_bi_ge/us_social_security_cola;_ylt=AvoLM33N1yCk27dnocRFutJ34T0D;_ylu=X3oDMTJvZnZ2MzYxBGFzc2V0A2FwLzIwMDkxMDE1L3VzX3NvY2lhbF9zZWN1cml0eV9jb2xhBGNwb3MDMQRwb3MDMgRzZWMDeW5fdG9wX3N0b3J5BHNsawNzb2NpYWxzZWN1cmk-

And no matter what the cooked numbers say prices are going up.

I am on Medicare but I still have to pay my share. I will probably be doing the same with this check since my treatments are to continue for the rest of my life.

Americas Seniors have done the right thing by giving their COLA increase to the bankers. Being a banker is a challenging and poorly-rewarded endeavor: by helping a banker to put food on his table, we help America to rebuild itself.

Sincerely,

Hank Paulson
Larry Summers
Tim Geithner
Rahm Emanuel

He started out as a teller in the late 1950's and worked his way up in a small state bank. He was forced in to retirement after a series of mergers. He is appalled with what has happened and honestly think tar, feathers and rope are remedies for them.

...so that people can get a COLA that is eaten up by inflation? Great logic going on there.

Instead of rigged and manipulated numbers.

Great Kool-Aid there.

? I'm just wondering how long that kool-aid has been flowing.

According to Kevin Phillips, in his book, "Bad Money", and an article published in Harpers, and reprinted around the country last year,

http://www.tampabay.com/news/article473596.ece

If they didn't rig the numbers over the years, Social Security payments would be nearly double what they are today.

$13 Trillion in bad assets have been guaranteed, among other shenanigans. Social Security is less than $600 billion, so a 5% increase would be $30 billion.

$ trillions for bankers = OK
$30 billion for seniors = inflationary pressure

Got it!

How no COLA advance means somehow "the bankers" benefit, or are involved?

First question: Why is our government claiming that there's no need for a COLA advance?

I get it - you think because money went to the banks, there's "none left" to fund a COLA advance.

Horseshit. Just print more money. Why is that controversial NOW?

Congratulations!

That is the limitation of tying these things in with "inflation."

in El Paso.

Which has indeed lowered prices in my grocery store a bit, even if people don't want to believe me.

My electric bill is up almost 40%, despite using less.
Homeowners insurance, up 10%-Flood insurance up almost 20%.
Phone-cable-internet up 10%.
Bananas up 30%.
Lettuce up 30%

Let's see. If I factor in the "Hedonic Adjustment" (That's a real adjustment to COLA numbers).

I can substitute grass for lettuce. Prices are down!
I can substitute canned tuna for stone crab. Prices are down!
I can substitute hamburger for steak. Prices are down.


Sure, I'm a little over the top, but, that's how the calculate the numbers now. Even though your standard of living went down, there's no inflation.

Can I eat acorns instead of bananas? The squirrels seem to like them.

Gasoline receipts are about 35% less
Phone/cable/internet, cable is up maybe 2%, phone and internet are flat
Rent flat
Auto insurance 5% less
Groceries 10% less
Electric bill flat

My standard of living is the same, and I am spending less money on things than I did before.

I'm sure everybody has their own anecdotal data for their own budgets. That doesn't necessarily invalidate the inflation numbers.

Moreover, since the 1990s, the CPI has been subjected to three other adjustments, all downward and all dubious: product substitution (if flank steak gets too expensive, people are assumed to shift to hamburger, but nobody is assumed to move up to filet mignon), geometric weighting (goods and services in which costs are rising most rapidly get a lower weighting for a presumed reduction in consumption), and, most bizarrely, hedonic adjustment, an unusual computation by which additional quality is attributed to a product or service.
From Phillips article.


The hedonic adjustment, in particular, is as hard to estimate as it is to take seriously. No small part of the condemnation must lie in the timing.

If quality improvements are to be counted, that count should have begun in the 1950s and 1960s, when such products and services as air-conditioning, air travel, and automatic transmissions — and these are just the A's! — improved consumer satisfaction to a comparable or greater degree than have more recent innovations. That the change was made only in the late '90s shrieks of politics and opportunism, not integrity of measurement.

Most of the time, hedonic adjustment is used to reduce the effective cost of goods, which in turn reduces the stated rate of inflation. "All in all," Williams points out, "if you were to peel back changes that were made in the CPI going back to the Carter years, you'd see that the CPI would now be 3.5 percent to 4 percent higher" — meaning that, because of lost CPI increases, Social Security checks would be 70 percent greater than they currently are.

Furthermore, when discussing price pressure, government officials invariably bring up "core" inflation, which excludes precisely the two categories — food and energy — now verging on another 1970s-style price surge.

http://www.tampabay.com/news/article473596.ece

Most seniors are paying for Medicare D and Medi-gap coverage (unless, like my Mom they're "fortunate" enough to have an income so low the state & fed pick up all the insurance costs). What seniors are paying for health insurance alone would result in big cost of living adjustments.

not every senior has a huge SS check..my mom doesnt, and she barely gets by. we have to occassionally help her out with food. I finally talked her into applying for food stamps. Her medical costs for co pay eat up a lot of her check, she has health problems and she doesnt drive so she has to take a senior van that costs money also. There really is nothing left for her at the end of the month, period. She lives on very little
if the goddamned feds can hand 682 BILLION dollars to keep 2 bullshit wars in place, they can help the poor elderly.
250 dollars??? thats what a WALL STREET CEO uses as a TIP at dinner.

separate from SS. And their own health care.

I have a friend who works at senior services here in Mi. she has stories about seniors here that would curl your hair. Many many seniors are living out there with no help, no heat, and the food that some people wouldnt feed their dogs.

People of my grandparents' generation lived through the depression and learned to economize. My grandparents were farmers who made at best an average income, but they spent very little and saved as much as they could. By the time they were retirement age each of my grandparents had several hundreds of thousands of dollars in savings and woned farms of three hundred to four hundred acres.

I struggle to follow the prudent living that they taught me. I observe my friends spending most of their income and not saving anything. A program to teach the economic practices of the post depression years would be a very good thing.

:shrug:

My sister got WIC and she had to attend classes that taught nutrition and child care.

Source: AP

WASHINGTON — There will be no cost of living increase for more than 50 million Social Security recipients next year, the first year without a raise since automatic adjustments were adopted in 1975, the government announced Thursday.

Blame falling consumer prices. By law, cost of living adjustments are pegged to inflation, which is negative this year because of lower energy costs. Social Security payments, however, cannot go down.

Thursday's announcement comes a day after President Barack Obama called for a second round of $250 stimulus payments for seniors, veterans, retired railroad workers and people with disabilities.

The payments would match the ones issued to seniors earlier this year as part of the government's economic recovery package. The payments would be equal to about a 2 percent increase for the average Social Security recipient.

Social Security payments increased by 5.8 percent in January, the largest increase since 1982. The big increase was largely because of a spike in energy costs in 2008.....



Read more: http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5jWbDrKBPDcOvEPhXT9GeIzB4ijLQD9BBHCMO3

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Not like they need it. :eyes:

then the Cost of Living Adjustment should be 0. It makes sense.

Whether or not Social Security payments are adequate or not is a different issue.

And that devastates seniors. Unacceptable.

But shouldn't the same standard be applied to the federal workforce, military, and Congress as well?

increasing their premiums and I'd imagine that would apply to Medi-gap policies as well.

I know when I do my Mom's grocery shopping - and her list doesn't vary much - the amount she spends on food every week isn't going down. And, she has received a rent increase not much of one, but an increase none the less (though she does get some subsidy, the amount she pays will go up). I'm just thankful her income is low enough that her insurance costs are all covered by Medicare and the state program that covers the gaps.

However the cost of living is calculated, apparently doesn't bear any relation to the real world and what people actually have to spend their money on.

We pay double SS and will more than likely never collect a dime on it. Right now we are barely hanging on. There are no salary increases, no benefits, just people trying to make it on less income. I think that the people that are actually receiving SS now can make the adjustment. Quite frankly if I were depending on SS to live on I would be worried about the lack of folks contributing. The pool continues to dwindle folks.

13 billion is not that much money and they should be able to find a way to cut it from the rest of the budget.

Yeah. That means you:



Oh and all the seniors who were bitching about health care reform at "town hall" meetings should also be required to submit a thank you note before getting a check.

And ask them to double up the payments for the next 50 years.

And the money can come from that ugly-ass thing that looks like this:

they can come up with a hell of a lot more for seniors. a lot of seniors do NOT receive much in SS. My mom has just applied for food stamps with her income.
come on! not all people on SS get that much, and much of it is eaten up by co pay for Medicare.
oh, but Wall Street is doing fine, of course.

JEREMY SCAHILL: Right. Look, we have President Obama making it a point, regularly, to say, "We're going to have Guantánamo closed by early next year." The fact is that, at Bagram, we see an expansion. They're spending $60 million to expand that prison. You have hundreds of people held without charges. You have people that are being denied access to the Red Cross in violation of international law. And you have an ongoing position, by the Obama administration, formed under Bush, that these prisoners don't have right to habeas corpus. There are very disturbing signals being sent with Afghanistan as a microcosm. Not to mention these regular attacks that we're seeing inside of Pakistan that have killed upwards of 700 civilians using these robotic drones since 2006. Including 100 since Obama took power.

http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/06052009/transcript4.html

it's automatic- no vote required.

Obama is asking for but let us remember what this really means - no raises for government workers. Think of the money saved by refusing to up the wages of the SCOTUS and everyone on down. Apparently there was 0% inflation this year so it is not a cut but the natural outcome of COLA laws.

caviar for the failed bankers

cat food for grandma

so far Obama has turned out to be a real Robin Hood

he needs to work on direction though

all kidding aside, this is brutal unfairness among our seniors

dow 10,000 was a giant welfare check to stockholders with massive losses, that bailed out many seniors (and i dont feel completely bad about that, it includes many I know and care about)

but it was done at the expense of the poorer seniors, who never had much to begin with, now dealing with a destroyed dollar and no COLA

this was a direct transfer from poor to rich seniors

... and other income and THEY stay static this year. Yank the payroll tax cap to get them to pay more their fair share of social security and medicare benefits!

slashing foreign aid and pulling out of 2 stupid fucking wars would soooooooooooooo take care of all of our financial woes!!

will give themselves a big, fat pay raise while people starve.