Social Security: Lie To Me, Lie To Me!

Oh, come, come, come. Tell me that there’s no available money to increase Social Security payments next year. I know wars cost money. I know we’ve taken on uncountable trillions in national debt. I can accept that—after all, anyone who has collect Social Security for over two years is on welfare anyway. So I can live with the facts.
All welfare is being cut; we know that. Social Security was never designed to do more than make sure the elderly could afford minimal food and shelter. Anything more than that you were expected to save for yourself. So just give me the facts.
But don’t LIE to me. Don’t tell me that “because there was no inflation last year, there will be no increase in Social Security benefits this January”. Piffle. Balderdash. Pish and Tosh. Pish/Tosh. Phooey. Quite bluntly, you’re full of it.
The data sets that are used to compute inflation are the most skewed bits of fact in the entire land of governmental make-believe. First of all, inflation used to be computed by not including the cost of food and fuel. Why not? Because those prices are too volatile, we’re told.
When prices got really “volatile” in an upward direction—I always thought that was what inflation WAS. But no, it didn’t seem to include anything you bought regularly. (It’s a bit like my recycling service: they will pick up everything, EXCEPT something you might buy, something you might use or something you might wish to dispose of.)
As I recollect, grocery prices have been being upwardly volatile for most of my life. In the 1970’s, the two of could feed ourselves for under twenty dollars a week. Now we regularly spend about fifteen to twenty times that for four of us. (My wife says I am trapped in an antiquated era—one when an Arrow shirt cost six bucks. My first VW came in at way under two thousand.)
But, you see, there’s been a big recession this past year. Prices have held steady or even declined on an item by item basis. Technically they can probably prove themselves right. Cheese, for instance, went way up last year and now has come back down. See? It didn’t inflate.
Something else IS happening. The price on the item stays the same, but! We’re all familiar with the fact that sizes have been cut—remember when a cup of yogurt was eight ounces? Now, as prices stay level, other things are happening.
I noticed recently that the “double roll” sized toilet paper I’ve been buying for years, now lasts about as long as the old single roll. Cleaning products don’t seem to do the job as well as they did a few years ago. Do you suppose they’ve substituted on the ingredients?
Some products have suddenly developed a new taste. Same price; it just doesn’t seem quite the same. I talked to a man who runs a business and complained that sizes are shrinking, ingredients changing. He didn’t argue. He merely explained that if he raises his prices by even a tiny amount, he literally has people screaming at him. So he has to do SOMETHING beside hike the cost.
Sam’s Club does an interesting thing. A product will disappear off the shelves for several weeks—long enough so most of us don’t have the old size around anymore. Then it will reappear, two cans less in the package or a few ounces less in the bottle. Same price. (Please, Walmart takes enough hits—they aren’t alone. They might get MILLIONS of customers screaming.)
Something I noticed a few weeks ago. My shampoo bottle is the same size (it’s opaque), but when I hold it up to a light, it’s down an ounce or two in the bottle.
Same quantity, some price—THAT’S no inflation. More quantity, same price—that might be deflation. Less quantity, same price—is that inflation? Same price, inferior ingredients—what on earth is that? Whatever you call it, it means a dollar doesn’t go as far.
Lie to us, lie to us. A lot of us will believe it. Do we have a choice?