So says an article about Social Security. Do you believe this baloney?

[Paper Roses]

No cost of living increase. Why?

Read this.
http://www.nbcnews.com/business/retirement/lower-gas-prices-means-no-social-security-increase-next-year-n442501

[MADem]

1. I can believe it--they base those numbers off the CPI.

The government is scheduled to announce the COLA — or lack of one — on Thursday, when it releases the Consumer Price Index for September. Inflation has been so low this year that economists say there is little chance the September numbers will produce a benefit increase for next year.

One could argue (fairly, too) that the items they consider for the CPI are not an accurate reflection of a social security recipient's expenditures, but I don't think they'll be moved. At least not soon.

[PoliticAverse]

2. Why? Because they use an inflation index divorced from reality for those on Social Security. n/t

[Shandris]

3. That's absolutely amazing. No inflation. Which I find odd, since...

...my electric bill went up 19% this year.

Guess it was my imagination. Yeah, that's the ticket.

[Nye Bevan]

4. Significantly lower gas prices is not "baloney",

and that's what's really driving the zero cost of living adjustment. However, it is certainly possible to argue that this is unfair to seniors who do not drive and will not benefit from cheaper gas.

[Igel]

5. You'll never get complete equality.

My mother got SS benefits. When electricity increased, she got the same COLA the people in Michigan got. She lived in AZ, in a large house, and her electric bill increase was almost 10% of her benefit check.

If you lived in Michigan and had little AC for 8 months of the year, and fuel oil didn't increase, you got the same increase.

We want the COLA to be tailed to the individual and not drive behavior, at the same time we want it to be equal for everybody. It's a catch-22 that's unworkable. If you're vegan and the COLA includes an increase because milk, eggs, meat increased, you get a windfall; if you're an omnivore and you base the COLA on a vegan diet, you're screwed.

[hobbit709]

8. So why aren't grocery prices dropping?

My cost of living is based more on food and utilities than gas prices, and neither of those two are dropping.

[Igel]

6. Don't like it, get the law changed.

Except that some tried to do that, and there were a lot of proposals to alter the cost of living formula.

A lot of people calculated that given then-current conditions most revisions to the CPI would reduce the COLA, and that was unacceptable. The CPI benefited people, so they wanted the old one because it got them larger benefit checks.

Now a lot of people are calculating that given the current conditions the CPI will fail to provide a COLA and that is unacceptable. The CPI changes then might well benefit people now, perhaps not, but in any event people now want the old one changed because it would get them larger benefit checks.

The only constant in that is "larger benefit checks." That's the ultimate metric for "fair" for most people when it comes to this kind of discussion--does it benefit me, now? If so, it's fair. If not, it's unfair.

[Bluenorthwest]

7. Times have changed....

I HAVE today signed H.R. 15390, which extends the temporary ceiling on the national debt, and which, among other measures, provides for an across-the-board increase of 20 percent in social security benefits.

One important feature of this legislation which I greet with special favor is the automatic increase provision which will allow social security benefits to keep pace with the cost of living. This provision is one which I have long urged, and I am pleased that the Congress has at last fulfilled a request which I have been making since the first months of my Administration. This action constitutes a major break-through for older Americans, for it says at last that inflation-proof social security benefits are theirs as a matter of right, and not as something which must be temporarily won over and over again from each succeeding Congress."
Richard M Nixon

[Wellstone ruled]

9. This so called Basket of Goods and Services is

a collection of moving targets. It is nothing more than the Politic of the Moment. We are under the thumb of the Tea Billie discretion makers,do you really think they are going to allow fixed Income folks to receive some type of monetary increases. Like the Dick Wadd from Ohio said,oh they will get use to it!!!!!!

[Downwinder]

10. That's O.K.

If there was a COLA my Medicare Part "B" would go up $50/mo.