OK, everybody tell me how heartless I am, but I don't get the "anger" this is supposedly generating:
As if voters don't have enough to be angry about this election year, the government is expected to announce this week that more than 58 million Social Security recipients will go through another year without an increase in their monthly benefits.
It would mark only the second year without an increase since automatic adjustments for inflation were adopted in 1975. The first year was this year.
[. . .]
It's not the congressional Democrats' fault, but that's the way politics works,” Biggs said. “A lot of people will feel hostile about it.”
The cost-of-living adjustments, or COLAs, are automatically set each year by an inflation measure that was adopted by Congress back in the 1970s. Based on inflation so far this year, the trustees who oversee Social Security project there will be no COLA for 2011.
The COLAs are based on inflation, so if seniors aren't getting them, that means there's no inflation to speak of, right? Why isn't that a good thing? And there's no punishment when there is negative inflation -- SSAN payments merely remain the same. What am I missing herer?
