This is incredible. They are touting the automatic COLA increases, which have been around since 1975 from a law passed by Congress, as a Biden achievement! Biden had nothing to do with it, nor does he dole out anything, all it means is that inflation was the highest in 40 yrs 😂
▪️Annual COLAs are tied to the CPI-W index (urban wage & clerical workers) which is slightly different from the CPI-U (urban consumers), the headline number most people refer to. Increasing SS payments means that SS will just become insolvent quicker, it’s not a good thing!
https://www.ssa.gov/cola/
▪️On a related note, the CPI data for Sept came out yesterday and was again higher than expected. The CPI-U rose 0.4% in Sept, +8.2% year over year (YoY) which was a slight decline from last month, but there are lots of troubling signs that inflation will remain high.
▪️The last 2 months have been cooled mostly by steep declines in energy prices, and also used cars. But it’s doubtful energy will continue falling in the coming months, meanwhile price inflation in the broader economy has taken root.
▪️In the beginning of the inflation crisis, the shelter component helped tamp down the inflation numbers. Shelter is almost 1/3 of the CPI and was growing at ~2-5% for most of the past year, which helped the headline number stay at “just” 7-9%. But shelter is now rising.
▪️In Sept, shelter rose 0.7% and 6.6% YoY, the highest in 40 yrs. This also propelled the core index (excluding food & energy) to a 40 yr high. Shelter is a much stickier index and won’t likely come down quickly, meaning elevated CPI readings will probably continue.
▪️Food also remains high, +0.8% in Sept (11.2% YoY). Food away from home rose the most in 41 years! If energy increases again in the coming months we could see CPI actually go up and reach new highs, something few are expecting but would have giant repercussions.
https://www.bls.gov/news.release/cpi.nr0.htm
It’s bizarre to see them seesaw back and forth that Trump is totally clueless and aloof, just golfing all day, then all of a sudden he’s a dangerous king/dictator who’s diligently plotting to seize absolute power.
▪️This one is frustrating because, while it’s nice to see the vigor and speed that DOGE is acting with, they’re also sloppy with some of their findings. This is not some bombshell, millions of dead people’s SS numbers aren’t being paid out to fraudsters.
▪️This problem has been known for some time, you can read an inspector general’s report from 2015 about millions of names on the SS “numident” not being correctly annotated for deaths, even though they were older than 112 (the oldest known American at the time).
https://oig-files.ssa.gov/audits/full/A-06-14-34030_0.pdf
▪️There are innocent explanations for some of these. Expatriates that died outside the country, for example. Or immigrants given temporary work permit who returned to their country, people issued new numbers for various reasons, etc. However, most are simply due to the govt not diligently keeping track of deaths.
▪️It’s embarrassing that the govt has millions of numbers on the numident that are ...
