The Booman has now explained it all for us as to how the Social Security cuts are going to be OK, as I expected they would be (remember this olden Goldie?) and I suggest you read it right now rather than wait around for me to try to understand it clearly enough to explain it again.
There is certainly something very wrong with the idea of chaining the Consumer Price Index to the idea of inflation by product substitution turned upside down, if that's [jump]
what it really is. That is, I happen to have learned once during a lucid moment that people react to inflation with what is termed product substitution: less steak, shall we say, if the price of steak is rising, and more beans. What the newspaper pandits have been saying is that the existence of beans proves that a rise in the price of steak is not as inflationary as it looks. If beans became extinct it would be different. And of course a rise in the price of beans is unmitigated inflation because there is no substitute for beans. Which, if this is all correct, means economists may be even dumber than you imagined.
But I'm hoping that the newspaper pandits are wrong, which would not upset anyone's world views, and I'm certain that the Booman is right and that the President will, as has been his habit, work to make sure that the more pernicious parts of the legislation don't end up hurting anybody. At which he will ultimately fail, of course, but things will be a lot better than they would have been if he had not tried.
After you've been eating beans for a long time...
