General Discussion

Even the current CPI doesn't keep up with the inflation faced by the elderly, the closest one that does is the CPI-E an option that only defenders of SS appear to talk about, opponents of SS like to talk about bathtubs and drowning when they aren't talking about "entitlements" and then they only talk about a chained CPI, or privatization schemes, but SS opponents are like that as they tend to ignore plans that actually help rather than harm seniors that they appear to view as useless eaters for collecting earned benefits.

http://www.ncpssm.org/PublicPolicy/SocialSecurity/Documents/ArticleID/1159/The-CPI-E-%E2%80%93-A-Better-Option-for-Calculating-Social-Security-COLAs

I think they might understand income relative to inflation if their total investment income as a dollar figure per year was frozen 10 years ago and I told them as an experiment to gauge their reaction that they were doing as well today as they were ten years ago, but maybe not, they do have a certain willful ignorance about them..

If income does not rise with inflation then income IS cut, but to understand that one must understand the relevance of inflation and how the number is relative to that, my grand niece does not grok this, but she is only 4, I believe she will understand it in a few years as her parents are not wealthy conservative trust fund idiots but well-trained educators.