Social Security "Boost" is Half The Story. The Numbers and the Propaganda today.

Today I will show you how the NY Daily News is covering the SS numbers. The Daily News is an entirely Big Corp, GOP, Capitalism operation.

First quote, "It's an abrupt break from a long lull that saw COLA averaging just 1.65% a year over the past 10 years."

True, but if you add in the 5 previous years when there was no COLA that 1.65% would be a great deal lower.

And my Main Point is that the monthly Medicare contribution grew from $23.00 dollars per month, and a yearly $280.00 to $148.00 per month and $1,735.00 Yearly in the years from 2007 until today.

The NY Daily News fails to mention this. True, we do not yet know what the Medicare deduction will be, but I bet it will be large enough to hurt those who need this money the most.

Social Security payments are pegged to our contributions while we are working and so they vary. This is Progressive.

Medicare deductions are the same for all of us up to a certain yearly income. REGRESSIVE. Punitive. By Design. (IDK what that ceiling is. I mentioned to granma on another thread $87,000 yearly but I realize that may be inaccurate.)

The workers who earned the least wind up paying a higher percentage of their checks. FDR would be rolling in his grave.....

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snoopydawg's picture

The amount does seem high until you compare it to how much cost of living has gone up and it hasn’t kept up with it.

Devious…

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Which AIPAC/MIC/pharma/bank bought politician are you going to vote for? Don’t be surprised when nothing changes.

@snoopydawg @snoopydawg is the Giving with one hand----especially in an Election Year---that's what the whopping 5.9% is for--- and the Taking with the other hand.

Which is what Trump and Obama before him has done. Obama barely bothered to raise SS. Trump did better on that. The numbers for both of them raising the Medicare Deduction is shameful, imho.

SS goes up in 2012 because it is decided in 2011 in the summer and fall.

Now in 2021, ready for Election year in 2022.

What is NOT mentioned are the constant hikes in the Medicare Deduction part, which rise uniformly for the well off and poorest at the exact same rate. The definition of a REGRESSIVE tax being placed on low income.

Trump did raise the SS rate, and the Medicare Deduction rates even higher.

This is a mystery and a secret as far as the media is concerned.

I thought that with our educated caring group of members, we would want to understand the game that is being run on us.

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NYCVG

zed2's picture

>It seems inexplicable to me that we have a rising retirement age and a falling life expectancy.

Your life expectancy in the US varies a lot (as much as 15 years) by income and access to health care.

Falling access to health care is a big part of the reason some parts of the US are so far behind in life expectancy.

De facto retirement ages are falling because people are (perhaps involuntarily) dropping out of the workforce due to lack of jobs. Technology has proven to be very good at saving labor. Also, as people age their endurance and stamina declines, and their expectations of wages increase. Also, lower fertility rates are playing havoc with governments expectation of labor force availability. Fewer young people may lead to countries paying people to have children, or inviting more intra-company transfers, which the media is trying to conflate with migration, so wages wont rise.

The alternative would be educating more young people which is costly and may violate trade rules by 'unfairly competing' with various forms of commercial education. .

China recently raised their retirement age for both men and women to 60 and 50 respectively.
and ended their one child rule.

Despite massive protests, France also raised their retirement age to 62.

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zed2's picture

Do you have the article's URL?

People should be aware that we agreed in 1994 to deregulate all financial services which could easily lead to the ending of Medicare and Social Security if they are challenged and found to be violations of WTO rules. The likelihood of this is much higher than people realize. These subsidies will only be allowed if they are found to not be unfairly competing with trade in services. (Banking, insurance, etc.) The WTO is the boss now.

The alternative is leaving the WTO. This may bite the UK too at the beginning of next year. (Since they sell health insurance there. their NHS may not be allowed, because its too good of a deal.)

Its been this way since 1995 but they delayed the privatization out over all this time.

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@zed2 Big boost in Soc Sec checks for millions
Looking beyond the cost-of-living adjustment, Rep. John Larson (r.) is pushing long-term fixes to ensure stability of Social Security.
the Associated Press
WASHINGTON — Millions of retirees on Social Security will get a 5.9% boost in benefits for 2022. The biggest cost-of-living adjustment in 39 years follows a burst in inflation as the economy struggles to shake off the drag of the coronavirus pandemic.
The COLA, as it’s commonly called, amounts to an added $92 a month for the average retired worker, according to estimates Wednesday from the Social Security Administration. It’s an abrupt break from a long lull in inflation that saw cost-of-living adjustments averaging just 1.65% a year over the past 10 years.
With the increase, the estimated average Social Security payment for a retired worker will be $1,657 a month next year.
A typical couple’s benefits would rise by $154 to $2,753 per month.
But that’s just to help make up for rising costs that recipients are already paying for food, gasoline and other goods and services.
The COLA affects household budgets for about 1 in 5 Americans. That includes Social Security recipients, disabled veterans and federal retirees, nearly 70 million people in all. For baby boomers who embarked on retirement within the past 15 years, it will be the biggest increase they’ve seen.
Among them is Kitty Ruderman of Queens, who retired from a career as an executive assistant and has been collecting Social Security for about 10 years. “We wait to hear every year what the increase is going to be, and every year it’s been so insignificant,” she said. “This year, thank goodness, it will make a difference.”
Ruderman says she times her grocery shopping to take advantage of midweek senior citizen discounts, but even so, price hikes have been “extreme.” She says she doesn’t think she can afford a medication that her doctor has recommended.
This year’s Social Security trustees report amplified warnings about the long-range financial stability of the program. But there’s little talk about fixes in Congress, with lawmakers’ consumed by President Biden’s massive domestic legislation and partisan machinations over the national debt. Social Security cannot be addressed through the budget reconciliation process Democrats are attempting to use to deliver Biden’s promises.
Social Security’s turn will come, said Rep. John Larson (D-Conn.), chairman of the House Social Security subcommittee and author of legislation to tackle shortfalls that would leave the program unable to pay full benefits in less than 15 years. His bill would raise payroll taxes while also changing the COLA formula to give more weight to health care expenses and other costs that weigh more heavily on the elderly. Larson said he intends to press ahead next year.
“This one-time shot of COLA is not the antidote,” he said.
Although Biden’s domestic package includes a major expansion of Medicare to cover dental, hearing and vision care, Larson said he hears from constituents that seniors are feeling neglected by the Democrats.
“In town halls and tele-town halls they’re saying, ‘We are really happy with what you did on the child tax credit, but what about us?’ ” Larson added. “In a midterm election, this is a very important constituency.”
Economist Marilyn Moon, who also served as public trustee for Social Security and Medicare, said she believes the current spurt of inflation will be temporary, due to highly unusual economic circumstances.
“I would think there is going to be an increase this year that you won’t see reproduced in the future,” Moon said.
But policymakers should not delay getting to work on retirement programs, she said.
“We’re at a point in time where people don’t react to policy needs until there is a sense of desperation, and both Social Security and Medicare are programs that benefit from long-range planning rather short-range machinations,” she said.
Social Security is financed by payroll taxes collected from workers and their employers. Each pays 6.2% on wages up to a cap, which is adjusted each year for inflation. Next year the maximum amount of earnings subject to Social Security payroll taxes will increase to $147,000.
The financing scheme dates to the 1930s, the brainchild of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, who believed a payroll tax would foster among average Americans a sense of ownership that would protect the program from political interference.

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NYCVG

zed2's picture

which virtually dooms "systems of staututory social security" in countries that have signed it. (Effective date Feb 26, 1998)

COVID is likely to double the cost of health insurance and its certain that this is going to make health insurance for people who have high risk conditions that make the uninsurable struggle to buy adequate insurance. You seem to perhaps be a New Yourker. You must remember how New Yorkers could buy insurance if they could pay the price they could not be shut out. Ppos cost frpm a low of around $000 a month to a high of around $6800 a month. (in 2009) Now with COVID increasing so many peoples risk we can expect costs to be higher.

HMOS in 2009 were a bit cheaper. But there was no public right to affordable healthcare. Nor could there be under the WTO or the planned TISA. We agreed in 1998 to freeze regulation in financial services so the ACA's regulations that managed toget insurers to cover the third of US families who are uninsurable is already being dismantled. The freeze's effective date is February 26, 1998. This business is the payback for the developing country srvices, and its bait to get them to come ionto the US and serve communities who otherwise would be rejected fior mortgages and healthcare insurance. We also committed to privatize and outsource/offshore a great many jobs which currentlky are government jobs. Its discriminatory they say to funnel so many jobs to US firms and restruictions like viusa laws are discrimination against foreign corporations and their workers. The cost is so much lower. Wage here are in some cases ten or twenty times what they are elsewhere. That is a burden on business, they say. Do you understand now? The US also makes firms pay higher weages here than they do at home. Since the marke access is a contract and the repayment of a debt this may be forbidden by international law.

Read the GATS agreement. Part of the World Trade Organization, which we entered effective January 1, 195. Its kind of like a new global economic Constitution which remakes he world for international corporations and especially the financial sector.

In addition to the aforementioned Annex on Financial Services, many other parts of GATS apply including the Understanding on Commitments in Financial Services. It includes the aforementioned STAND-STILL clause. Which ensures that countries wont enact barriers to trade. We all needed changes in areas like healthy insurance we all know that but they would violate the expectations of international investors. Health insurance would be less profitable. Thats been forbidden. Politicians are conducting a huge cover up. Telling us what they know we want to hear. That they can or will finx things. However this is a lie.. They are actually planning to ffshoire millions of jobs and at the same time, dismantle safety nets. Putting people in an impossible situation.; We do not owe jobs to foreign countries. We do owe jobs to our own country's people, especially our yooung people.

I wouldnt lie to you about something as important as this. Neither would or did Julian Assange.

But they would. And DID. And DO. So they want to silence the truth.

the Understanding on Commitments in Financial Services contains a standstill clause. They should be illegal because they nullify democracy.

. It most certainly would make it easy to roll back the so called "Affordable Care Act" restoring the insurance practices that were in place in 1998. Like Rescission. Also known as "post claim underwriting". This is all archived in Geneva. You can read this, and you should then realize what I am saying is true. Its not secret. Look at it if you care about your future. Social Security could already be under a cloud. Read the first paragraph of the Annex.. The government of today is shamelessly lying to the entire country. The liberalness order is basically a cult of thieves. Is this what you voted for? A theft of democracy? Thats what they claim. But there is a huge democracy deficit.

"majoritarianism" Which by the way is what they consider democracy. The new global economic governance organizations are elitist organizations who now rule the world. Nobody voted for this or them. A scam is being created toi try to create an arguyment that we did. But we did not. We've been l;ied to be the slickest liars in the world, thats all.
Each country gets one vote. So the vote for the US goes to corporations. Period. This is a theft maybe the biggest ever.

Wto disputes have no appeal. You have no voice in these rules that controll everything economic. Like jobs, and things that are traded internationally like services of all kinds. Any law governments enact that "affect trade in services" in any way.

For example, by joining the WTO we agreed that we could only have public services jn countries where those services were not sold, indeed were entirely free.. already.. then.

As far as I can tell, Canada is the only country that passes this two line test in GATS article 1:3 Lucky Canadians have also had the benefit of an excellent NGO which exp-lained what was being done to them. (https://policyalternatives.ca )
and a standstill applied as of the date in 1998, only public service systems that pre-existed that date were allowed to continue, others had/have to be dismantled so the country can come into conformance. . This has been proceeding in Europe and the US and the UK.. Various once public services are being privatized and globalized and people are being forced to pay for them to corporate entities. .

Jopbs in these products have been promised to various entities.. often in less developed countries..

In order to funnel opportunities like patient care to the poor countries (when government subsidies are involved this may be required) many changes are being made.

Basically all these organizations are organizations of elites. They lend a legitimacy to a huge global theft by paying their game.

Organizations like the WEF are unapologetic anti democracy. Theeir rules funnel jobs to the rich.

block out what they call civil society but these organizations are not public they are organizations of elites who in order to participate when the people vote to do things like have social safety nets, to solve problems that cannot be solved in the ways they want they must legitimize a corrupt illegitimiate system. .

They "capture the autonomous level of regulation" of financial services when it was much lower, right before the financial crash it caused. When it was very much more profitable, because they could, Then, they often did dump people on their ass after paying insurance premiums for many years, when they got sick, made claims (and subsequently became uninsurables)
They did reject a great many customers, even those who could and did pay whatever was demanded.

These bad actors basically give multinational corporations everything they want. Democracy is already a sham.

In an atmosphere of triumphalism, social safety nets are being dismantled in Eastern Europe and changes intended to destroy unions and lower wages are being made. Because the things people need and want are shut out and politicians are deliberately misleading the whole country.

They are getting to collect a paycheck without having to do their jobs and represent the peoples interests.

These deals are making the worst kinds of changes in order to preside over thefts from the people of important needs.

taking the responsibility for health care off of the politicians.

Its just mind blowing how bad the insurance industry have been and still often are. they used to retroactively cancel policies back to the beginning when people made claims. Thats just how the business operates. It literally demands the right to end that ability.

Politics is a business too, politicians have easy, low show jobs, where they often dont have much actual or legal responsibility. (Trade agreements control what they can do, basically just what has been agreed what corporations want, to make the most money. Just that.)

This is not complicated. Its the purest form of corruption.

They get to lie to us to cover this all up, and there is no real accountability. They are all in on the scam, or they wouldn't be allowed there.

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zed2's picture

@NYCVG, do you know that we signed an agreement in 1994 that transitions nations who signed it to regulate all "measures" pursued by governments so as to not represent barriers to corporate trade in those services. Youre wrong and its easy to show why. There is a huge disinformation campaign to make people think that there will be a safety net in the future which frankly has been made illegal by our own government's global campaign against pub;ic services. The chance of this not happening is very slim. We're run by what is effectively a cult. All of these politicians are clearly lying to us. The American people are very very gullible. Sorry to carry bad news but I am telling you the truth. Read up on the General Agreement on Trade in Services and the Trade in Services Agreement. Exposing the second is why they are trying soi hard to silence assage. What they are doing is essentially trying to steal the entire future world and end democracy. Because otherwise people would vote the most profitable problems away. They are essentially a cult. One that wants to destroy the world we want. Everything they pretend is a lie. Again, sorry to tell you the unpleasant sorrowing truth. Read some history you'll see anti-majoritatrianism (what they call democracy) is how the UK in particular, and neoliberalism, and the Geneva School and the Mont Pelerin Society, have framed democracy historically too.

Open your eyes.

I've been following this scheme for more than a decade. Read the documents that I cite here from time to time. I'm not BSing you.

I will be very surprised if people ever receive what we were promised. They will find a way to get out of their obligations. A war, a global financial crisis. the means to do this have been put into place with underhanded trade deals.. Watch the video linked below.

You can almost bet on it. Its against their religion. Greed.

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zed2's picture

Any government measure specifically "systems of statutory social security" are not supposed to compete with commercial services, loans, banks, insurance etc. These sectors are these international corporations property. After the US signbed us into the WTO a huge change occurred. Everything changed. Its like a new Constitution, that only covers economic things - business. Essentials that are traded, both goods and services. Non-economic matters like abortion and gay marriage remain political and under the power of voters, just as they were before 1995.

In September 1986, we at Punta Del Este promised to globalize "services" or everything you could not drop on your foot. A change that was supposed to represent a huge reallocation of wealth, the biggest in history, according to former WTO Director-General Michael Moore.

The GATT promised to "liberalize services" in order to remake the planet for corporations, and create a "rules based international system" based on the mobility of money and the mobility of money.

If any government subsidized services crowd out commercial entities invisibly, we could be brought before the WTO and forced to do whatever they want. Millions could lose jobs and homes top temporary guest workers. India brought us before the WTO in March 2016. They claim our visa rules violate the GATS. Princeton economist Alan Blinder says we could lose 26% of our jobs, others in a replication study found that the losses could be as much as twice as much, or 50% our better jobs. Think tanks say that we are throwing trillions of dollars away on the sidewalk by paying Americans over high wages, when we could pay foar less.. by honoring our promises in the 1990s, and opening the doors to the potential - huge expansion in outsourcing. we are pulling the run out from under millions of Americans who lack the education to keep up with the rich of the rest of the world.

If we owe these obligations to the foreign fiorms, how did we incur this debt? and profits.. at a huge cost to the American people in jobs. (tHe Harvwrd Blinder replication study estimates as much as 45% of our jobs - the better ones are "in play" as they put it.) . Neoliberalism wants to implement the WTO future vision - a rich person's ideal world of extreme inequality, low taxes and regulation, and privatized high profit services, perhaps lacking public services like public healthcare and education. that brought us the prosperous 20th century, which many neoliberals say are outdated) The US government - claimed to be a consensus, wants to lock down the future for corporations and create new binding trade deals like TISA to create a global corporate restructuring that sends more wealth upward and curtails the power of unions and changing values - and labor and health standards. Problems like endocrine disrupting chemicals and the ENSO (the El Nino climate oscillation which causes huge global famines) are ticking time bombs.

But the corporatist system has only one solution for everything. The Market, it claims, is a signalling system..

But people want a voice, people dont agree with neoliberals that all has already been decided forever. Countries that are limiting the use of GATS Mode Four however are on thin ice, legally.

Americans made a promise to share its public jobs with the lowest bidding forms of the least equal nations. The nations where the biggest profits and investments are going.

Africa is framed as the future. Millions of jobs could be done by African tech firms at low costs.

Africa is rejecting Communism and embracing the for profit system. Afriucan enterpreneurs, funded by the wealthy families that came out on top of decolonization.

The guest worker programs, are said to conflict with US laws. Wage laws applied to GATS' temporary guest workers, While staffing US companies, In the Icorp decision Indian temporary staffing companies it was determined had to pay workers at least a legal US wage. a USCIS 2017 panel determined. India's case claims that their business model depends on "temporary movement of natural persons", (the official name of GATS Mode Four) because of the lower wages. But we are limiting the numbers of L1 work visas.. The requirement to pay a "legal US wage" is discrimination against them, they claim. And is costing them billions of dollars in profits. We're claimed by US think tanks to be throwing trillion s of dollars away on the sidewalk by limiting the planned guest worker obligation we committed to in 1995.
.. by limiting the numbers of guest workers, we are depriving the global temporary staffing firms of the promised benefits of the 1995 agreement, which was supposed to help re-balance the wealth of the developing nations upward - Countries whose elites bitterly claim they have been deprived of their birthrights. Wealth that should have created more billionaires there. Instead, mostly millionaires. Yes, GATS mostly does help the rich because only the rich have the advanced educations necessary and math skills to do the 21st century jobs. And America is not producing them, instead millions of Americans are buried in student debt making it financially impossible for them to take these 21st century tech jobs at the wages they pay.

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zed2's picture

This is what we see a lot of its recognizable everywhere..

Disregard the fact that its old, the age makes it seem irrelevant. Starting in the 50s the US started doing this too. The news today is really manbipulated.

All the tabloid papers were started by/ work for the CIA. Probably social media too, Youtube and others too. If you tell the truth they will downrate/demonetize/hide you.

If it bleeds it leads, and so on. This is a good film because it shows you the aspects of this crap that seem to be universal.

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