Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:<\/p>\n
There will be no increase in Social Security in 2016, because there is no inflation.\u00a0 The government\u2019s official rate of inflation is 0.2%<\/p>\n
Except . . . that doesn\u2019t feel right, does it?\u00a0 The price of gasoline may be holding steady, but nothing else is.\u00a0 It\u2019s almost as if the government\u2019s official rate is understating inflation.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s because it is.\u00a0 The way they calculate inflation was changed in 1980, and changed again in 1990, always to make things look as if the government is going a wonderful job of keeping prices down, despite what you see at the check-out.<\/p>\n
Using today\u2019s method, the rate is 0.2%; using the 1990 method, the rate of inflation is 4%; using the 1980 method, the rate of inflation is 7%. <\/a>\u00a0This isn\u2019t dry economist eye-glazing mumbo-jumbo, this is senior citizens eating dog food<\/a> because their checks don\u2019t go far enough.<\/p>\n
I understand the need to limit spending to keep the system solvent.\u00a0 The solution isn\u2019t to send seniors to the pet store, it\u2019s to reduce the number of participants in the Ponzi scheme. \u00a0Face it: 20-somethings are never going to see Social Security, it\u2019ll collapse long before they get there.\u00a0 Might as well enact the legislation that says so right now and get them used to the idea of saving for their own future.<\/p>\n
Joe Doakes<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Except that “saving for their future” is going to get riskier and riskier, if we keep going with the current debt bubble, too.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Joe Doakes from Como Park emails: There will be no increase in Social Security in 2016, because there is no inflation.\u00a0 The government\u2019s official rate of inflation is 0.2% Except . . . that doesn\u2019t feel right, does it?\u00a0 The price of gasoline may be holding steady, but nothing else is.\u00a0 It\u2019s almost as if […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[69],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-55719","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-socialism"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55719","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=55719"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55719\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":55720,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55719\/revisions\/55720"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=55719"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=55719"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=55719"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}