With inflation at 6% retired Illinois teachers taking a big pension hit.
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Consumer prices rose at a 6.2% annual rate in October, well above expectations, as inflation continued, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported this week.
It seems as if every news item these days is framed by who it helps or hurts politically, either in 2022 or 2024.
The ongoing inflationary upsurge in the cost goods and services is no exception.
Most reports frame as if Biden is the culprit.
I don’t get that.
Isn’t it the corporations raising prices, often using the pandemic as an excuse, to gouge the consumer?
Isn’t it the corporations that are making billions from the plague?
Absolutely.
For those on Social Security the increase is good news and bad news.
The formula Social Security uses to set the annual Cost of Living Adjustment (COLA) will likely mean that Social Security recipients will see their benefit increase by 5.9%.
It will be the largest increase since 2008.
The bad news is that for older people, retired and whose only retirement income is Social Security, it is a losing struggle to keep up with the cost of things even now.
The COLA increase only holds them steady.
Friday Medicare announced that there will be an increase in the cost of Part B, the Medicare benefit we pay for.
The Medicare Part B premium for 2022 will rise to $170.10 from $148.50 this year.
That may not be much for Ken Griffin but for many older folks I know its major.
Obviously this cuts into any benefit from the COLA increase.
For retired Illinois public school teachers like me the news is much worse.
Our retirement benefit comes from our pension in the Illinois Teacher Retirement System. Members of TRS do not receive Social Security unless they contributed before becoming teachers. Even then any Social Security benefit is reduced by roughly two thirds.
I have written before about the federal laws that govern public employees enrolled in state pension programs.
Called the WEP/GPO, earned benefits are cut and most spousal death benefits are eliminated.
For those of us who worked in the private sector and contributed to Social Security, the remaining benefit after WEP may be enough to cover the Medicare Part B premium.
Members of TRS do not receive a Cost of Living Adjustment.
Our yearly benefit increase is not tied to inflation.
In 2022, our retirement benefit will be 3% compounded just as it is every year.
For most of the past couple of decades, the 3% compounded has kept us steady compared to the cost of things.
Not this year.
Then there is the impact of any changes that might or might not occur with Build Back Better.
It is becoming increasingly clear that if there is a bill at all, there will be no dental or vision coverage.
There may be limited containment of drug costs.
And whatever can get past Manchin and other conservative Democrats in congress, increased coverage will not likely become available for several years.
I have strongly recommended before that retirees looking for Medicare advice should contact your State Health Insurance Assistance Program (SHIP).
Illinois has one, of course.
Unlike the advice from private brokers, the SHIP counselors are there at no charge.
Today’s poem
The Lovers of the Poor by Gwendolyn Brooks
arrive. The Ladies from the Ladies’ Betterment League
Arrive in the afternoon, the late light slanting
In diluted gold bars across the boulevard brag
Of proud, seamed faces with mercy and murder hinting
Here, there, interrupting, all deep and debonair,
The pink paint on the innocence of fear;
Walk in a gingerly manner up the hall.
Cutting with knives served by their softest care,
Served by their love, so barbarously fair.
Whose mothers taught: You’d better not be cruel!
You had better not throw stones upon the wrens!
Herein they kiss and coddle and assault
Anew and dearly in the innocence
With which they baffle nature. Who are full,
Sleek, tender-clad, fit, fiftyish, a-glow, all
Sweetly abortive, hinting at fat fruit,
Judge it high time that fiftyish fingers felt
Beneath the lovelier planes of enterprise.
To resurrect. To moisten with milky chill.
To be a random hitching-post or plush.
To be, for wet eyes, random and handy hem.
Their guild is giving money to the poor.
The worthy poor. The very very worthy
And beautiful poor. Perhaps just not too swarthy?
perhaps just not too dirty nor too dim
Nor—passionate. In truth, what they could wish
Is—something less than derelict or dull.
Not staunch enough to stab, though, gaze for gaze!
God shield them sharply from the beggar-bold!
The noxious needy ones whose battle’s bald
Nonetheless for being voiceless, hits one down.
But it’s all so bad! and entirely too much for them.
The stench; the urine, cabbage, and dead beans,
Dead porridges of assorted dusty grains,
The old smoke, heavy diapers, and, they’re told,
Something called chitterlings. The darkness. Drawn
Darkness, or dirty light. The soil that stirs.
The soil that looks the soil of centuries.
And for that matter the general oldness. Old
Wood. Old marble. Old tile. Old old old.
Not homekind Oldness! Not Lake Forest, Glencoe.
Nothing is sturdy, nothing is majestic,
There is no quiet drama, no rubbed glaze, no
Unkillable infirmity of such
A tasteful turn as lately they have left,
Glencoe, Lake Forest, and to which their cars
Must presently restore them. When they’re done
With dullards and distortions of this fistic
Patience of the poor and put-upon.
They’ve never seen such a make-do-ness as
Newspaper rugs before! In this, this “flat,”
Their hostess is gathering up the oozed, the rich
Rugs of the morning (tattered! the bespattered. . . .)
Readies to spread clean rugs for afternoon.
Here is a scene for you. The Ladies look,
In horror, behind a substantial citizeness
Whose trains clank out across her swollen heart.
Who, arms akimbo, almost fills a door.
All tumbling children, quilts dragged to the floor
And tortured thereover, potato peelings, soft-
Eyed kitten, hunched-up, haggard, to-be-hurt.
Their League is allotting largesse to the Lost.
But to put their clean, their pretty money, to put
Their money collected from delicate rose-fingers
Tipped with their hundred flawless rose-nails seems . . .
They own Spode, Lowestoft, candelabra,
Mantels, and hostess gowns, and sunburst clocks,
Turtle soup, Chippendale, red satin “hangings,”
Aubussons and Hattie Carnegie. They Winter
In Palm Beach; cross the Water in June; attend,
When suitable, the nice Art Institute;
Buy the right books in the best bindings; saunter
On Michigan, Easter mornings, in sun or wind.
Oh Squalor! This sick four-story hulk, this fibre
With fissures everywhere! Why, what are bringings
Of loathe-love largesse? What shall peril hungers
So old old, what shall flatter the desolate?
Tin can, blocked fire escape and chitterling
And swaggering seeking youth and the puzzled wreckage
Of the middle passage, and urine and stale shames
And, again, the porridges of the underslung
And children children children. Heavens! That
Was a rat, surely, off there, in the shadows? Long
And long-tailed? Gray? The Ladies from the Ladies’
Betterment League agree it will be better
To achieve the outer air that rights and steadies,
To hie to a house that does not holler, to ring
Bells elsetime, better presently to cater
To no more Possibilities, to get
Away. Perhaps the money can be posted.
Perhaps they two may choose another Slum!
Some serious sooty half-unhappy home!—
Where loathe-love likelier may be invested.
Keeping their scented bodies in the center
Of the hall as they walk down the hysterical hall,
They allow their lovely skirts to graze no wall,
Are off at what they manage of a canter,
And, resuming all the clues of what they were,
Try to avoid inhaling the laden air.