Millions of older people face shrinking Social Security checks next year, the first time in a generation that payments would not rise. The trustees who oversee Social Security are projecting there won’t be a cost of living adjustment (COLA) for the next two years. That hasn’t happened since automatic increases were adopted in 1975.
By law, Social Security benefits cannot go down. Nevertheless, monthly payments would drop for millions of people in the Medicare prescription drug program because the premiums, which often are deducted from Social Security payments, are scheduled to go up slightly.
Read it all I see this one made the front page of yesterday’s local paper.
This say much about the Entitlement Mentality which we have fostered over the past few decades.
Social Security retirement benefits and medicare are not entitlements. We have paid into the fund and paid the premiums for the medicare our entire working lives. The amounts over the years have gone up both for the employee and the employer. The problem with SS and medicare is that it has been “raped” over the years.
There’s also the added problem of Boomers’ abortions, removing such a high percentage of what should have been Gen X that worker support for SS isn’t there for them. The irony is beyond measure.
The problem with SS and medicare is that they could never meet their budget, being Socialist wedge policies. In addition, LBJ dumped their capital into the general fund to pay for great society entitlement programs, meaning they must be funded with general tax revenue. FICA has been a tax, and Social Security and Medicare entitlements, for 40 years. SS and medicare currently suck down 40% of US government expenditures by law, compared to 20% for discretionary military expenditure.
[url=http://www.forbes.com/2009/05/14/taxes-social-security-opinions-columnists-medicare.html]from the trustees of the Social Security system:[/url] [blockquote]every taxpayer would have to pay 13% more just to make sure that all Social Security benefits currently promised will be paid.[/blockquote] and [blockquote]every taxpayer would face a 28% increase in their income taxes if general revenues were used to pay future Medicare part A benefits that have been promised over and above revenues from the Medicare tax.[/blockquote]
Fine example of redefining the terms so you can do what you want.
[blockquote]Social Security retirement benefits and medicare are not entitlements. We have paid into the fund and paid the premiums for the medicare our entire working lives. [/blockquote]
Sorry, Julia, they are entitlements. You’ve paid all your working life, as have I, but there are no “funds”…all taxes collected go toward current beneficiaries. You don’t have an account with actual assets in it in Washington like you would if you’d been allowed to invest that money yourself. All you have is the federal government’s promise to plunder workers today to pay your SS and Medicare bill.
I know there is no “fund”; however, I don’t agree that seniors who count on those payments have an entitlement mentality. Now those SS disability payments to families with children who are classified as slow learners — that is a different story. That is the new welfare system.
I read this article in the Sunday paper, and I was mystified by the title of the article. If you read the article, it says the payments are not shrinking, they are staying the same as they are tied to inflation. Since there is not any inflation, if anything there is deflation at the moment, then the payments are staying the same this year, after a large jump last year.
I don’t mean to be crass. I think I understand what the paper was getting at, but the payments are not shrinking. That would be a cut.
The Social Security system is in effect a gigantic government-sponsored Ponzi scheme. It is hitting the dead end of all Ponzi schemes: there are not enough current payers to pay the “dividends” promised to earlier buyers.
#8 has it; when this is done on a far smaller scale you go to jail for 150 years.
Bingo. Somebody hand Hakkatan #8 a cigar.
So what do you do when the biggest Ponzi scheme in history starts to crash? Add 200,000,000 suckers to your sucker list by mixing in health insurance and punt the problem to your kids.
Come eschaton.
Hi Archer,
The Social Security payments will actually shrink because, while there will be no COLA, the Medicare prescription drug program premiums being deducted from those Social Security payments are scheduled to go up slightly.
And yes, it is a ponzi scheme. We could have started the fix for this by having private accounts, but the electorate decided not to. Soooo, by the time I get to retire, I won’t be able to receive the benefits that were promised to me because there won’t be enough workers to pay them and all the money that I paid into the system will have been spent by the Boomers.
Gee, thanks. Social Security has taken my money since I was 14 and I have been paying for the lifestyle of others for 31 years. When my turn to collect comes…so sorry, we’re closed now!
However, there is another possibility in which we all get paid what we were promised. Of course, payment will be with hyper-inflated Federal Reserve Notes that will be more valuable as wall paper or in my fireplace for heat than they will be as spending money.
We certainly live in interesting times.