Yesterday the Senate passed a slightly amended version of a House bill designed to limit Iran’s dealings and interests in the Western Hemisphere. The bill, H.R.3783, the “Countering Iran in the Western Hemisphere Act of 2012” calls for a plan that would,

Casey Mulligan digs himself in deeper with a follow-up post on his argument that: 1) the expansion of social insurance programs in response to the recession was a big problem because it "erased" unemployed American’s incentives to work; and 2) the best ev

December 2012, Alan Barber and Nicole Woo

As expected, the U.N. launched a new cholera eradication initiative yesterday at a press event in the late afternoon featuring U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon and other speakers. The Miami Herald’s Jacqueline Charles leads off her article on the announ

Dean Baker
The Exchange (Yahoo! Finance), December 12, 2012

Mark WeisbrotAl Jazeera English, December 12, 2012

The Very Serious People have taken off the gloves. There are no rules when it comes to the battle over Social Security and Medicare as Brooks Jackson shows in his "FactCheck" on the use of the chained CPI to index the Social Security cost-of-living adjustments (COLA).

Jackson strongly endorses the use of the chained CPI, describing it in the first sentence as "a more accurate cost-of-living adjustment." The chained CPI would have the effect of reducing the annual COLA by approximately 0.3 percentage points. This reduction would be cumulative (e.g. 3 percent after 10 years, 6 percent after 20 years), leading to an average cut in lifetime benefits of approximately 3 percent for the typical beneficiary.

To push his case, Jackson seriously misrepresents the evidence. There is reason to believe that a chained index provides a better measure of inflation, since it takes account of the substitution between goods. However, the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) has been producing an experimental elderly index (CPI-E) for almost three decades, which has generally shown a somewhat more rapid rate of inflation than the standard CPI currently being used to index Social Security benefits. The CPI-E would imply that the current COLA has been underadjusting for inflation, not overadjusting. 

Jackson notes the CPI-E, but dismisses it as:

"an unpublished, 'experimental' index"

He then cites BLS's warning that:

"'any conclusions drawn from it should be used with caution.' BLS also concedes that the CPI-E has a number of shortcomings because it simply re-weights the price data collected for its regular price surveys, without attempting to collect some important data specific to seniors."

Given that this experimental index has shown evidence that the elderly see a higher rate of inflation than the population as a whole, it would seem that anyone concerned about having an accurate measure of the rate of inflation experienced by the elderly would want to see the BLS construct a full CPI-E. In fact, several hundred economists recently signed a statement calling on BLS to construct such an index. This would be the obvious route to go for anyone interested in an accurate index for the inflation adjustment of more than $10 trillion in Social Security benefits over the next decade. 

Dean Baker
Al Jazeera English, December 11, 2012

Dozens of Haitian and international organizations have marked UN Human Rights Day today by calling for an end to forced evictions, which, as Oxfam notes, “infringe on other rights in addition to the right to adequate housing” due to “the inter-relationshi

Dean Baker
The Guardian Unlimited, 16 de noviembre, 2012
En Inglés