Due to inflation
(which measures the successive decrease in value of the dollar), Social
Security payments receive cost-of-living adjustments. These are based on the
consumer price index, known as the CPI. The index is a rough indication of the
rise in price of goods over time, and thus is said to be a measure of
inflation. (When money is worth less you need more of it to buy any given
item.) Currently, the government estimates inflation to be 1.8%.
However, anyone who has gone to the grocery store recently knows that prices
have increased much more than 2%. My own grocery bill is over 5% higher than
last year. So, why the discrepancy?
In its infinite wisdom, in the 70's, the government decided to exclude the cost
of food and energy from the calculation of the CPI, on the grounds that the
prices were too volatile and therefore misleading. Wrong. The price of food and
energy were showing too clearly the true cost of inflation. In 2012, if you
factor in food and energy in the CPI, inflation is about 7%. This effectively
means that seniors are paying more for food and gas, but their monthly checks
aren’t keeping up with this increase. This is crazy. Besides health care,
food and gas are seniors greatest expenditures -- what they actually spend most
of their money on. Yet, these very items are excluded from the cost-of-living
adjustment. Don’t let the government recalculate the CPI. It is not going
to favor seniors that’s for sure.
unfortunately, most of us to try to keep speaking out it pretty well slammed and do not have as happy an ending as your heroine in harm. The most we can hope is to keep trying and speaking louder and hopefully it will be heard something like the 12th monkey
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