You have nothing to lose but your chained CPI

I see with delight that Obie is planning to cut Social Security, in a characteristically muffled and dishonest way, by tinkering with the technicalities of how inflation is calculated. If hamburger becomes more expensive, old people will switch to cat food. So naturally cat food should replace hamburger in the ‘market basket’. Beautiful, eh?

I say that I see it with delight although, of course, I really have mixed feelings. I like to be proved right — even before his second inauguration he’s selling out the people who voted for him, as I said he would — but on the other hand, this thievish subterfuge will definitely make my old age a colder and starker affair.

Oh well, there will also probably be less of it, since Medicare will certainly be next. Look on the bright side.

 

8 thoughts on “You have nothing to lose but your chained CPI

  1. And Richard Trumka of the spineless and irrelevant AFL-CIO says he won’t urge Democrats to walk away from the impending budget deal just because Obama is going to agree to Social Security cuts. Now there’s class struggle for you.

  2. The price of empire is high Michael, very high indeed. The lesser among us must pay with our lives. But just think, you live in the most powerful nation on the planet. Does that not compensate for the miserable terms of life?

    Yeah, I didn’t think so.

  3. Whenever people say that retirees will be reduced to eating catfood i always imagine friskies or something. But if you get Fancy Feast, well thats a silver lining right there isn’t it?

  4. Denim @ 7:04 am makes a good point. However, although seniors on fixed incomes do not cause inflation, they are riding with us toward the mythical “fiscal cliff” and (according to the Capitulator-in-Chief) they must participate in the “shared sacrifice” of austerity. This bit of nonsense jogged 2 memories for me: one recent, another from my childhood.

    Last month I read an article entitled, “CEO Evening News?” (alternet.org/media/ceo-evening-news). Lloyd “I’m doing God’s work” Blankfein had been invited to explain the “fiscal cliff” and the necessity of benefit reductions to us non-millionaires out there in television land. Yeah, right. For fiscal year 2012, Mr. Blankfein’s total compensation was $21.74 million. His weekly gross pay was $418,076.92. His hourly wage (based on a 40-hr work week) was $10,451.92. Yet WE’RE supposed to expect to go without? To Blankfein, Obama, the Waltons, the Koch Bros., etc., my reply is, “You first!”

    The second memory was the last bit of an article or letter to the editor I read when I was 10 years old in 1968. It was, I believe, shortly before the passage of Medicare. A young person had been behind an elderly woman in the check-out line at a grocery. The young person noticed that the clerk hadn’t put the woman’s can of cat food in the bag – he/she picked it up and followed the woman outside. ‘You forgot your cat food.’ ‘Thank you,’ the old woman had a sad smile. (I’ll never forget this as long as I live.) “The cat – is me.” This is the future the 0.01%, the CEO’s they employ, and the politicians they rent have envisioned for us?!

    • You coulda left off the question mark. If austerity means anything, it means cat food — and you should be grateful to get it, you good-for-nothing parasite.

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