Doubling down on theft of benefits from seniors....
The current argument to steal from seniors by switching to chained CPI from CPI-W completely ignores the fact that the government already has an actual more accurate measurement of of the cost of living for social security recipients known as CPI-E.
http://www.newyorkfed.org/research/current_issues/ci9-5/ci9-5.html
Some argue that social security benefits should be adjusted using a price index that reflects the spending habits of the elderly rather than those of workers. This study suggests that if such an index were adopted today, over the next forty years benefit levels would increase and the social security trust fund could become insolvent up to five years sooner than projected. snip
We argue that increases in benefits resulting from CPI-E indexation would in fact be significant. This assertion is based on our calculation of what average OASI benefits would be today if the index had been adopted in 1984, our first year of data. We find that overall, benefits in 2001 would have been 3.84 percent higher. This percentage corresponds to an average monthly benefit of $912, as opposed to the current $878, which sums to $408 annually per beneficiary.7 Thus, assuming that the CPI-E reasonably represents the spending patterns of the elderly, seniors have experienced a nontrivial drop in their spending power since 1984.
We find that inflation as measured by the index for the elderly has been consistently higher than inflation as measured by the index for wage earners, with a 0.38 percent average annual difference since 1984. Much of the difference can be attributed to medical care, which constitutes a much larger share of total expenditures for the typical senior. snip
Accordingly, we estimate that if inflation for the elderly continued to be higher than inflation for workers, and if reindexing of benefits were to start today, the effect over the next forty years would be to increase social security expenses and move the trust fund as much as five years closer to insolvency than currently projected. The actual outcome would depend on how persistent higher inflation for seniors is in the future. The trade-off facing policymakers, therefore, is between prolonging the solvency of the social security trust fund and maintaining the purchasing power of seniors over time. snip
Given seniors are already being cheated of an honest COLA why are we discussing robbing them more?
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