I recommend everyone read and reflect on Bad Money. It's
essential history and it doesn't lay the blame at one person's
particular door, but it sure blows holes into what we are to accept as
CPI-U.
<>BLS has had for some time an alternative
measure--CPI-E--and here's a place you can take a gander at the
difference in what your SS payment would be under CPI-U vs.
CPI-ED. http://www.aarp.org/research/legis-polit/ssreform/aresearch-import-327-DD52.html
You don't have to believe in conspiracies to suspect many folks are getting hosed.
I'll
wager over time that we are going to hear less and less about a Social
Security "crisis" because people are already starting to work longer
and therefore contribute more monies to SSA in the form of wages.
My wife, though nominally retired, does some consulting and SS
deductions are taken out.
If current market conditions continue,
Boomers won't be able to take SS at 62. They will stay in the
labor force of necessity, contributing more monies to SS and, by
default, helping to raise the minimum age at which you can retire to 65. Correspondingly, FRA (full retirement age), I'll bet, will end up at 70 (not the current 67). Life, itself, has a way of solving problems legislators can't.
Now, Medicare is another question.
Ultimately,
serious inflation alters behavior and the best inflation hedge I know
of is to consume less. It would be wonderful if SUVs became as
extinct as the dinosaurs they are. SUVs have always struck me as
rolling metaphors for American excess. Bob U.
