Social Security is racing towards insolvency because the program pays out more in benefits to retirees than it collects in taxes from working Americans.
Handing out even more generous benefits will make that situation worse. Yet that is exactly what the trustees who run Social Security are planning to do: Retirees will get a 3.6 percent cost-of-living adjustment (COLA) next year. That increase is 0.8 percentage points higher than last year's, and it is 0.9 percentage points higher than what Social Security was expecting to pay.
