Raising Social Security Benefits

So, I was reading my latest emails from Democratic candidates begging for cash donations and I noticed that they were playing around with the idea of raising Social Security benefits by $200.

But Social Security payments are scheduled to go up anyway due to record inflation. Leave it to Democrats to promise something that will happen anyway. LOL!

 

Promises made, promises delivered.

 

They stole that move from Pee Wee Herman. "I meant to do that!"

 

Republicans will fight it I am sure

 

Do you know if they were talking about raising it 200 in addition to normal cost of living adjustment?

 

Another great move in an election year

 

Asserted absent any citation offered in support.... You sure are sure of a lot of things these days. Kreskow??? Is that you?? LMAO.

 

Yes. But these kinds of 'promises' annoy me.

 

No mention of that being in addition to regular increases. Which is why I'm suspicious.

 

But does it say otherwise?

I think your suspicion is the reason you think it's not in addition.

 

If you get a $2000 a month benefit then the expected 10.5 percent SS benefit increase next year more than covers the promise.

 

~ What if you don't ? The average SS benefit is $1,666.49 .

 

Then it sucks to be you.

 

Maybe, because SS is in no position to pay out more - it's projected to deplete its reserves in the next ten to twelve years and the COLAs for last year and this one won't help that at all. After that it will basically be in a cash in - cash out basis.

 

If they were only talking about the already included annual increase, then they were being misleading to begin with.

I would call it an outright lie now since the average increase would only be 168.

Only 10% of SS benefits are 2000 or more a month.

 

Yes. Except that there's some budget trickery going on with Social Security and the Federal Budget. It can't really go bankrupt. It will just lead to soaring budget deficits.

 

What is the "trickery" you are referring to? As far as I understand the law, Social Security will only pay out from it's own funds, so in 2035 it will be cutting benefits to 70 to 80 percent of what's owed to match the incoming funding.

 

on
SS depends on FICA - a tax wages. For many years the amount collected exceeded the amount promised to works and was invested in a special type of federal bond. Problem is that lately the amount payed out has exceeded the income and SS has usual interest from those bonds to make up the difference. The problem on the horizon is that a some point soon the bonds are going to have to be redeemed to continue benefits at the current rate.

 

Then we need to remove the cap on income that is subject to the FICA tax.

 

~ Another thought would be to stop SS payments to the wealthy/ upper income earners and increase it for those with no assets ... ?

 

~ Do you speak from experience .. ?

 

Yea, but i am wary of making SS means tested, because they will eventually call it welfare.

 

~ Good point ...

 

It's been a few years (a lot actually) since I researched it, so I might be forgetting some things, but from what I understand, the SSA holds a sort of bond from the federal budget. It's under the line item "debt held by the public" and the federal government is practically paying SSA with a special type of bond every year.

I'll have to look into it again later when I have more time.

 

RIght now it's taxed at 6.2% for income below 132,000. We could set the cap at 250k and it would solve most of our problems.

If we did that and taxed 1% of everything over 250k we would never have to worry about it running out of money,