Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:
There will be no increase in Social Security in 2016, because there is no inflation. The government’s official rate of inflation is 0.2%
Except . . . that doesn’t feel right, does it? The price of gasoline may be holding steady, but nothing else is. It’s almost as if the government’s official rate is understating inflation.
That’s because it is. The way they calculate inflation was changed in 1980, and changed again in 1990, always to make things look as if the government is going a wonderful job of keeping prices down, despite what you see at the check-out.
Using today’s method, the rate is 0.2%; using the 1990 method, the rate of inflation is 4%; using the 1980 method, the rate of inflation is 7%. This isn’t dry economist eye-glazing mumbo-jumbo, this is senior citizens eating dog food because their checks don’t go far enough.
I understand the need to limit spending to keep the system solvent. The solution isn’t to send seniors to the pet store, it’s to reduce the number of participants in the Ponzi scheme. Face it: 20-somethings are never going to see Social Security, it’ll collapse long before they get there. Might as well enact the legislation that says so right now and get them used to the idea of saving for their own future.
Joe Doakes
Except that “saving for their future” is going to get riskier and riskier, if we keep going with the current debt bubble, too.
Will grandma stay alive another year. Stay tuned
have you bought dog food lately? Its expensive.
The hell with the dog food … let’s find the dog it belongs to.
Dog Gone!
I’m saving enough to employ a team of thugs to rob leftists to keep me comfortable in my dodage.
The bad news is you are too sick or old to drive.
The good news is gas is a lot cheaper.
Spot on DMA
The average social security monthly check is $559.
It is typical of the federal government that it has a mandatory retirement program that:
A) Takes 13% of every worker’s wages, from dollar number one.
B) Gives them a starvation-level retirement income.
C) Is nevertheless bankrupting the country.
The list of things Obama is responsible for gets longer every day. Maybe the House should investigate.
FACTCHECK.org recently smacked Sanders down for claiming SS does not add to the deficit. In fact, it added $73 billion in 2014 alone.
http://www.factcheck.org/2015/10/sanders-misleads-on-social-security/
While I’m at it, FACTCHECK also swatted down Clottin’s lies about gun violence.
Clinton [lies] on Gun Violence
In talking about the need for stronger gun control, Clinton said: “I think that we have to look at the fact that we lose 90 people a day from gun violence. This has gone on too long and it’s time the entire country stood up against the NRA.” Annual gun deaths do average about 90 people a day, but only a third of those are homicides.
Most gun deaths are suicides — a violent act, but not a crime, as some voters may think Clinton’s claim implied.
“According to the most recent figures from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, there were a total of 33,636 firearm deaths in 2013. That’s 92 per day for the year. Sixty-three percent of them, or 21,175, were suicides. Homicides totaled 11,208, and the rest were unintentional discharges (505), legal intervention/war (467) and undetermined (281).
Good one Blue! JD was right, numbers are complicated.
“The average Social Security retirement benefit is about $1,300 per month ($1,328 in 2015), and the maximum at full retirement age is more than $2,600 per month ($2,663 in 2015), but the exact amount you’ll get every month depends on how much you earned over your lifetime and how old you are when you start collecting Social Security.”
http://www.dummies.com/how-to/content/how-much-will-i-get-from-social-security.html
“On average, the typical spouse receives just $682 in monthly spousal benefits, or roughly half what the worker gets. Children on average get $648 per month, but again, that only includes the 629,000 children eligible to receive those benefits.”
I got the $559 amount from table 3 here:
https://www.ssa.gov/policy/docs/quickfacts/stat_snapshot/
Give Emery his due, he’s got a sharp eye. Table 2 is normal social security, which supports his claim of 1300 per month. Table 3 is SSI, a different program.
Moving goal posts, rewriting history, changing metrics – libturd modus operandi. They are always right you see… and if they are not, they will bend reality to their will… and against yours.
Oops! I thought SSI was normal Social Security. Apparently it’s a giveaway program for people who are old or disabled but don’t qualify for regular SS.
I know you like to ‘joke’ about my former Canadian citizenship. But if Social Security really had a trust fund, not an accounting fiction, it would be investing trillions of dollars for its future beneficiaries, like the system in Canada. But it isn’t. So we can pretend there’s a trust fund, but if you can’t withdraw from it without issuing new federal debt (and you can’t), then it doesn’t really exist.