Chip, Chip, Chip

Implications of Social Security cuts for young people.

The changes to the cost-of-living formula used by Social Security proposed by President Obama may sound small at first, reducing recipients’ checks by a few dollars every month. But the formula, known as chained CPI, is cumulative. You lose a few dollars this month. Next month you lose those same dollars and a few more. After 20 years the average Social Security recipient’s check will be more than $100 less than it would be under the current formula. To make matters worse, many economists argue that the existing cost-of-living formula already penalizes seniors because it fails to reflect the higher proportion of health care expenses in most seniors’ budgets, and the reality that health care inflation has outpaced broad inflation for many years.

It would probably require too much empathy and imagination to expect our senators to vote on this as though they would have to live on Social Security themselves, what?

Time to contact your senator.