Dear Mr. President: Don't You Dare Cut Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid

[George II]

19. It's a different way of calculating INCREASES (!!!)

I've done this before - compared the historic Social Security COLA to the CPI back to 1976.

Over those 38 years the COLA was higher than the CPI in only 16 years, it was LOWER than the CPI in 22 years.

If one were to take an average of the two (not the best way to compare, but....), the average COLA was 3.93% and the average CPI was 3.97%.

Further, if one were to take $1.00 and compound the annual adjustment for both the historic COLA and the CPI, the result in 2013 would be $4.26 using the historic COLA and $4.33 using the CPI.

Any way one plays with the numbers, historically tying the Social Security increase to the CPI would have resulted in an overall HIGHER increase than the actual increases.

All this "the sky is falling" gloom and doom about the chained CPI is unrealistic gnashing of teeth.