{"id":13138,"date":"2012-12-20T09:42:24","date_gmt":"2012-12-20T14:42:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/?p=13138"},"modified":"2016-06-10T12:05:44","modified_gmt":"2016-06-10T16:05:44","slug":"social-security-will-obama-cave","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/2012\/12\/20\/social-security-will-obama-cave\/","title":{"rendered":"Social Security: Will Obama Cave?"},"content":{"rendered":"

The American Prospect<\/em> has the Robert Kuttner article Social Security: Will Obama Cave?<\/strong><\/a>.<\/p>\n

The premise of the \u201cChained CPI\u201d is that the standard CPI overstates inflation because people regularly substitute products when they are more expensive. If beef is too pricey, people switch to chicken.<\/p>\n

There are two fallacies in this premise as applied to seniors. Most seniors already live so close to the margin of poverty that they have already done all the easy substituting, unless we expect them to further downshift from chicken to cat food, or to choose between filling stomachs and filling prescriptions.<\/p>\n

Moreover, the CPI as applied to seniors understates the true impact of inflation, not overstates it. As several studies have shown, the cost of health care has been increasing at more than twice the general rate of inflation, and seniors spend a far larger share of their incomes on medical care than younger Americans do.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This information backs up what I told Representative Richard Neal’s staffer as described in my previous post Cutting Social Security benefits is a cruel, stupid policy<\/strong><\/a>.<\/p>\n

One other set of enablers are those liberals who say that at least a disguised cut in Social Security is not quite as bad as raising the Medicare eligibility age, a Republican demand that Obama has rejected. This chorus includes the sainted Paul Krugman<\/a><\/strong>, another resolute liberal who ordinarily earns nothing but our thanks and appreciation.<\/p>\n

But saying that cutting Social Security is not quite as bad as cutting Medicare sets a pretty low bar. Neither should be cut.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The above quote also seems to back up my deviation from Krugman as mentioned in that previous post.<\/p>\n

My best hope is that Boehner will pass his Plan B in the House and so anger President Obama, that all negotiations fall through.\u00a0 Once on the other side of the cliff we can see what kind of a deal can be worked out with the next Congress.\u00a0 Perhaps with restricted ability to threaten filibuster in the Senate and fewer Tea Party members in the House, the President will finally come to recognize the strength of his position.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The American Prospect has the Robert Kuttner article Social Security: Will Obama Cave?. The premise of the \u201cChained CPI\u201d is that the standard CPI overstates inflation because people regularly substitute products when they are more expensive. If beef is too pricey, people switch to chicken. There are two fallacies in this premise as applied to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[166],"tags":[35],"class_list":{"0":"post-13138","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-stevegsposts","7":"tag-social-security","8":"czr-hentry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13138","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13138"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13138\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22770,"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13138\/revisions\/22770"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13138"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13138"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13138"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}