From the Social Security Administration:
With consumer prices down over the past year, monthly Social Security and Supplemental Security Income (SSI) benefits for nearly 65 million Americans will not automatically increase in 2016.
The Social Security Act provides for an automatic increase in Social Security and SSI benefits if there is an increase in inflation as measured by the Consumer Price Index for Urban Wage Earners and Clerical Workers (CPI-W). The period of consideration includes the third quarter of the last year a cost-of-living adjustment (COLA) was made to the third quarter of the current year. As determined by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, there was no increase in the CPI-W from the third quarter of 2014 to the third quarter of 2015. Therefore, under existing law, there can be no COLA in 2016.
Other adjustments that would normally take effect based on changes in the national average wage index also will not take effect in January 2016. Since there is no COLA, the statute also prohibits a change in the maximum amount of earnings subject to the Social Security tax, as well as the retirement earnings test exempt amounts. These amounts will remain unchanged in 2016. The attached fact sheet provides more information on 2016 Social Security and SSI changes.
The Department of Health and Human Services has not yet announced Medicare premium changes for 2016. Should there be an increase in the Medicare Part B premium, the law contains a “hold harmless” provision that protects approximately 70 percent of Social Security beneficiaries from paying a higher Part B premium, in order to avoid reducing their net Social Security benefit. Those not protected include higher income beneficiaries subject to an income-adjusted Part B premium and beneficiaries newly entitled to Part B in 2016. In addition, beneficiaries who have their Medicare Part B premiums paid by state medical assistance programs will see no change in their Social Security benefit. The state will be required to pay any Medicare Part B premium increase.
Information about Medicare changes for 2016, when available, will be found at www.medicare.gov.
For additional information, please go to www.socialsecurity.gov/cola.
Good news! Now all these freeloading old people can get up off their wrinkled butts and go get a job if they want more money. Who do they think they are just sitting around getting paid while the rest of us toil all day long.
WOW!! We all pay into social security taxes so there is a retirement one day. This money is earned not given out as a handout.
Yes and no. The average amount most people ever put into SS is depleted by age 70 given retirement at 65…most people live well past that which is exactly why the program is upside down. You have to assume an ever growing body of those actively working to support the elderly who lifespans keep getting longer and whose numbers will continue to swell as the 50’s kids of the world war II generation leave the workforce if they haven’t already. If your honest with yourself in some ways it is half your own and half a charity program.
Satire and sarcasm in Jubal?
If you want to “LOL”, the ratio between tax paying employed Baltimore City residents to unemployed, fraudulent claiming, .gov assistance money receiving residents is WAY out of whack.
The fact is, there are MANY able body people who can work for a living and support themselves and their families but find it easier to scam all of our .gov “programs” for that free money.
The government does not pay you any interest on the money you have contributed to Social Security along with the money contributed by the employer. The fact that you continue to receive social security after the total contributions you and the employer have made should be considered interest earned on your contributions.
I would agree that the investment avenue is sometimes up and sometimes down, but imagine you investing an overall average of $175 every two weeks along with matching funds from your employer for over 45 years and receiving compounded interest on that investment, then you retire at age 65. Do you really believe that withdrawing an amount each month equal to what social security is paying would exhaust your money after 5 years of retirement?
The original social security eligibility age was set at the median life expectancy. The government only intended for half the citizens that paid into it to ever collect a dime, not for everyone to live on it for 20+ years.
I definitely agree with you to some extent but the idea that had the government not “taken” this money everyone would have invested it wisely resulting in a greater return on investment and compounding interest is pure fiction. Right now an annuity returns about .04% which is negligible. The other option would be 401k type plans…better returns but lots of folks think it too risky. Plus in reality most folks would just as soon buy a bigger TV today than invest in something for tomorrow. Proof of that is something crazy like 80% of retiring adults have no other investments and will rely solely on SS to pay their bills. That is crazy.
Bernie will remove the salary cap on SS an it will instantly become solvent for the next 75 years.
You really believe that!? SS is nothing but a pyramid scheme; it counts upon there being more people paying into it than receiving payments from it. It is also unconstitutional if you actually read it through; but just like BHO, FDR thought the Constitution was an impediment to running the government the way he wanted it run. The thing that got SS through was a threat made to the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, who had offered an opinion on the unconstitutionality of SS, to ram through a law changing the composition of the SCOTUS so he could stack the new vacancies with sycophants who would do his bidding. That was enough to get the CJ to shut up and be a good little boy and let Father Franklin do whatever he d@mn well pleased with the government.
The rate of inflation doesn’t warrant a COLA for SS recipients, yet the Dems are crying they need a pay raise to attract those who are not wealthy to Congress. You can’t make this stuff up…….