I’m 71, so I’m on social security, and it’s great. Every month, a hefty deposit is dumped into my bank account. I love it. It’s not really enough to live on, so I’m still working,, but it sure makes living on what there is, easier. Of course if I had taken that social security deduction from my paycheck all these years, and used it to invest in municipal bonds and index funds, I would be getting a much bigger check now. But, of course, I would never have done that. I pretty much always spent everything. Essentially social security is a forced savings plan that invests your money badly at a rate of return that doesn’t even keep up with inflation.
But then, somehow, social security got a thing called a COLA, which meant that the social security checks would be adjusted to reflect inflation, and the more inflation, the bigger the check. Wow, that was great. Since the beginning of social security, inflation has always gone up, and the COLA always kicked in, and next year’s checks were always bigger than last year’s.
But the year that I started getting my checks, the COLA stopped cold, and has been that way ever since. What they did was to change the definition of inflation to not include food, housing, and energy, the only things that old people spend their money on. My mother died last year at the age of 96. She had enough money. She didn’t even need social security. The only things she spent money on were food, housing, and energy.
So, listen up young fools. This is the first step. First, stealthily eliminate the COLA, whiile pretending that it sill exists. You better start voting for people who want to straighten things out, instead of People who promise to give you all kinds of crap, free education, free health care, living minimum wage, increased social security payments, no war, etc., without ever mentioning the cost. These people are lying to you, even more than the other people who seem so uptight.