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Social Security recipients will receive a micro increase in 2017

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  • JFoster
    2016-06-23 03:13:18 PM
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    Interesting article here. New projections have reported that Social Security recipients will receive a small increase in 2017. It is all due to Social Security's cost-of-living-adjustment, which will increase .2% next year. So, if someone is receiving $1000 a month in Social Security, they would get a whopping $2 increase. This is just a good example of how upside down the cost of living in the U.S. is versus what we receive monetarily. Two bucks can hardly cover the cost of a cup of coffee. Little victories, I guess...
  • J.K.Logic
    2016-06-24 12:56:42 AM
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    Micro indeed. Cost of living needs to be more factored into these kinds of small increases. Course if it did, it'd dry up even faster. :/
  • JFoster
    2016-06-24 02:16:59 PM
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    True, and not to mention the SS trust running out in the coming decades. That alone will make any cost-of-living-adjustments beforehand negligible.
  • YellowSubmarine
    2016-07-11 12:24:06 PM
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    In what country in the world does cost of living only increase by .2% from one year to the next? That's absurd. Might as well not even do it at all.
  • JaredS
    2016-07-11 04:59:06 PM
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    YellowSubmarine Wrote: In what country in the world does cost of living only increase by .2% from one year to the next? That's absurd. Might as well not even do it at all.
    Yea, this is really sad. I am a firm proponent of dramatically overhauling the Social Security program by increasing the upper cap from $118,000 to $1 million or higher. The cap is woefully low and has to be changed soon.
  • bryce28
    2016-07-18 12:38:43 PM
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    JaredS Wrote:
    YellowSubmarine Wrote: In what country in the world does cost of living only increase by .2% from one year to the next? That's absurd. Might as well not even do it at all.
    Yea, this is really sad. I am a firm proponent of dramatically overhauling the Social Security program by increasing the upper cap from $118,000 to $1 million or higher. The cap is woefully low and has to be changed soon.

    I am not so sure. Correct me if I'm wrong, but SS benefits are like a government mandated retirement account. Maybe you don't agree with my wording there, but still. Everyone is required by law to chip in throughout their entire working lives, and then ideally everyone gets SS benefits paid back to them by monthly allowance when they reach retirement age, and choose to accept the benefits (from age 62-70).

    So the problem I see here is with fairness. If someone that makes 60K a year his or her entire life and someone that makes $2 million a year throughout their working life pay in the same amount into SS and get the same amount monthly when they retire, that seems fair. BUT if the $2 million yearly earner pays in substantially more, but when he or she retires only gets the exact same monthly payout as the lower earner, how is that fair?

    Unless that higher earner would in turn get MORE monthly benefits as a reward for when they retire, I don't think it's fair to raise the cap. You are simply punishing the higher earner.

  • JaredS
    2016-07-18 03:42:14 PM
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    bryce28 Wrote:I am not so sure. Correct me if I'm wrong, but SS benefits are like a government mandated retirement account. Maybe you don't agree with my wording there, but still. Everyone is required by law to chip in throughout their entire working lives, and then ideally everyone gets SS benefits paid back to them by monthly allowance when they reach retirement age, and choose to accept the benefits (from age 62-70).

    So the problem I see here is with fairness. If someone that makes 60K a year his or her entire life and someone that makes $2 million a year throughout their working life pay in the same amount into SS and get the same amount monthly when they retire, that seems fair. BUT if the $2 million yearly earner pays in substantially more, but when he or she retires only gets the exact same monthly payout as the lower earner, how is that fair?

    Unless that higher earner would in turn get MORE monthly benefits as a reward for when they retire, I don't think it's fair to raise the cap. You are simply punishing the higher earner.

    One thing I've learned about life is that it is often not very fair. And your argument can be flipped by asking what's fair about keeping the cap artificially low.

    We are an aging society and there are far more people who rely on their Social Security benefits as their only means of income than millionaires who would love nothing more than to get rid of the program entirely. Regardless, those millionaires would still theoretically get back the extra money they put in when they retire.

    That's the whole point of the program. You are, at least in theory, supposed to get back the money you put in. Raising the income cap from $118,500 to $2 million wouldn't change that. What it would do though is help alleviate the pressure baby boomers are putting on the program and actually give them a cost of living adjustment that they could work with.

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