More than 58 million retirees and disabled Americans will have to go another year without an increase in their Social Security benefits, the government is expected to announce this week.Of course, the seniors are upset as all get out.
It would mark only the second year without an increase since automatic adjustments for inflation were adopted in 1975. The first year was this year.
The cost-of-living adjustments, or COLAs, are automatically set each year by an inflation measure that was adopted by Congress back in the 1970s.
"I think it's disgusting," said Paul McNeil, 69, a retired state worker from Warwick, R.I., who said his food and utility costs have gone up, but his income has not. He lamented decisions by lawmakers that he said do not favor seniors.Let's pass over, for the moment, the point that a hell of a lot of the Teabaggers collect social security. Instead, let's step into the Wayback Machine to 1975. Inflation was running high and there were stories about seniors eating dog food. Congress passed a law mandating that government retirement benefits, including social security, would increase each year by the cost of living. From then on, the seniors made out pretty well. The Carter Administration put the burden of living with high inflation on the backs of government workers and the military, limiting them to cost of living increases of 5.5% when seniors were getting COLAs as high as 9.9% in 1979 and 14.3% in 1980. As things were, the seniors made out pretty well.
"They've got this idea that they've got to save money and basically they want to take it out of the people that will give them the least resistance," he said.
Now the economy is stalled. People are losing their jobs, still. Those who are working have had their hours cut. Those who are still working full time are having to pick up more of their health insurance and, in many cases, their pay has been cut.
And the seniors want sympathy because their benefits are not going up?
Cry me a river.
6 comments:
Many seniors I know had their 401k's slashed, property devalued, pensions stolen, and their health care increased. Their potential to find even a part time job to supplement losses is almost nil, because of their age, and younger competition. I find your comment heartless, and ignorant of their position in life. As you yourself come closer to senior living, your brain will slowly comprehend the predicament many middle class seniors are facing.
Sill a fan of your writing, just don't always agree, unless I'm missing some weird sarcasm here.
P
Seniors disproportionately make up the ranks of the teabaggers. How can one simultaneously demand more from the Federal government while decrying spending?
Note that seniors are not getting any less from the government. They are not having their SSI cut. Even if we edge into a deflationary spiral, senors still get the same amount of money.
Would not equate all seniors to teabaggers. My parents think the tea party are one retarded group of misinformed racists. My dad was working until last yr, and he is 80. The good life never materialized for them, and life is not very glamorous just on a SS income. Ask yourself how you could do it, if your savings goes in the shitter. I'm learning from them, and simplifying my life. We need to show respect for our seniors, not so much for the loud and stupid minority. Geez, I sound like my dad.
For once, I have to disagree with ya.
A lot of those seniors are trying to get by on less than a thousand bucks a month.
The price of basic foods has gone way up and is going to get worse as the economy keeps going down the toilet. The speculators ran up against the limit switch the other day on all grain futures, that should be a clue of what is coming.
Heating costs are going up and we will see headlines of old folks freezing to death in their own homes until it will become common to the point no one will think twice about it, while Goldman Sachs hands out record bonuses, again.
I won't be setting my 96 year old Grandmother afloat on an ice floe while these fuckers drink thirty year old scotch and eat caviar on toast. That's what Social Security is for and fuck them, she worked two fucking jobs for a long time.
She was retired when that scotch was still waiting to be made.
I am not a teabagger. I am a disabled vetern and have SSD as my only income. I live in poverty and dispise anyone who calls me a: Teabagger (I am nothing of the sort), a librul commie (I am neither), a parasite on the teat of Social Security (I now hate him). Living on a fixed income is not luxurious or special. I worked over 30 years and paid more for this than many have. I just want to live and pay my taxes, what is so wrong with that? Now cry me a river with those crocodile tears please.
Thanks in large measure to the party of the Teabaggers, we now have deficits in the trillion-plus range.
If those are going to be brought under control anytime soon, a hell of a lot of programs are going to be cut, because the party of Hoover is adamantly against raising taxes.
Those receiving SSI will be lucky if their benefits are not cut. If those receiving SSI want an increase over that which the law provides, it is going to come out f someone else's hide.
Feel free to nominate what gets cut. But lease show what your proposed increased benefit will cost and where the money will come from.
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