Day: September 20, 2022

Closing Thought–20Sep22

This an FYI for all my retired seniors that get a Social Security payment monthly….a must read to understand the news of the largest COLA in decades.

Our seniors got some good news recently…..it appears as if there will be a good substantial COLA for next year.

When we last read the tea leaves in May, it was looking like seniors could be looking at an 8.6% adjustment to their monthly Social Security checks in 2023. The cost-of-living adjustment (COLA) happens in October, and with just one month to go, the predicted increase has ticked up. The New York Times reports the Senior Citizens League is now projecting an 8.7% increase for next year. The Social Security Administration will make its announcement on Oct. 13. Our story from May 2022 follows:

Social Security’s cost-of-living adjustment (COLA) doesn’t happen until October, and it’ll be based on the previous three months of inflation numbers. But a forecast from the Senior Citizens League indicates those Social Security checks could see a big hike. CBS News reports the advocacy group for older Americans projected an 8.6% increase for 2023 based on the Consumer Price Index data for April that was released Wednesday. Consumer prices were up 8.3% last month from 12 months earlier, a slight decrease from March’s 8.5% annual increase. The COLA is calculated using a slight variation of that Consumer Price Index (CPI) called the CPI-W. The CPI-W was 8.9% in April.

Some 69 million Americans collect Social Security, and their average check is about $1,658 per month. Should that 8.6% hike come to pass, that would bring it to about $1,800 in 2023. As for the Senior Citizens League’s track record, it ultimately forecast a 6.1% COLA increase for 2022, versus an actual boost of 5.9%—an amount that isn’t keeping up with this year’s rate of inflation. The top three COLA increases since 1975 were 14.3% (1980), 11.2% (1981), and 9.9% (1979). An 8.6% increase would enter the list at No. 4. But it’s possible inflation will ease over the next five months. “I think the action at the Fed is going to slow things down,” Mary Johnson, Social Security and Medicare policy analyst at the Senior Citizens League, tells CNBC.

Not to worry the insurance companies and your c-pays will go up…..meaning that seniors will probably see a lot less of the raise than anticipated.

2023 will bring some major changes to the program…..

https://www.fool.com/investing/2022/09/18/3-changes-to-social-security-retirees-must-know/

Happens every time we get a good COLA….we lose most of it to the health industry….

https://www.fool.com/investing/2022/09/19/kiss-your-101-social-security-raise-goodbye-2023/

One of the worse scams in history….the American healthcare system.

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

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Zelensky’s Great Expectation

My regulars know that I am not a fan of all the funds and stuff we are pouring into Ukraine….I believe that this is just a funnel for the corruptible…..and we continue to feed that machine….just as we have done with other countries that we are saving from anarchy…..

The newest report coming out of Ukraine is that they are basically demanding the West (meaning the US) must guarantee their security…..

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on Tuesday welcomed a proposal drawn up by senior Ukrainian officials and a former NATO chief that outlined a plan for security guarantees Kyiv would seek from Western countries.

The proposal emphasizes Ukraine’s desire to become a NATO member and says that until Kyiv joins the Western military alliance, it needs security guarantees from other countries.

The document says that the “strongest security guarantee for Ukraine lies in its capability to defend itself.” It says building up a sufficient defensive force requires “a multi-decade effort of sustained investment in Ukraine’s defense industrial base, scalable weapons transfers and intelligence support from allies, intensive training missions and joint exercises under the European Union and NATO flags.”

The security guarantees Ukraine seeks from other countries is a commitment for them to support Ukraine’s ability to create this force to deter future attacks through military aid, funding of reconstruction, training, intelligence sharing, and joint exercises.

According to the document, the countries Ukraine wants security guarantees from include but are not limited to “the US, UK, Canada, Poland, Italy, Germany, France, Australia, Turkey, and Nordic, Baltic, and Central European countries.”

As part of this arrangement, Ukraine seeks a “massive training and joint maneuver program of Ukrainian forces and partners on Ukrainian territory with international trainers and advisors.”

Zelensky on Wednesday welcomed the plan, which was drawn up with the help of Anders Fogh Rasmussen, a former NATO secretary-general. Zelensky said that the report “should become the basis of the future security compact.”

(antiwar.com)

Join NATO?

Is that not the major reason that Russia invaded?

This is nothing more than a demand for an open-ended deal to continue the funneling dollars and bombs into Ukraine indefinitely.

And this will happen come 2023 and the spineless creeps we have in our Houses of Congress.

Just another incident of the US saving ‘democracy’….like Iraq and Afghanistan to name the most recent failures.

Open you damn eyes!

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”