Social Security and Inflation

We “Greedy Geezers” will not be getting an increase in our monthly Social Security benefit payments in January, because the CPI is still below what it was in 2008. Stories on the Web are talking about how unhappy recipients will be to not get an increase, especially because the CPI rose about 1 percent over the past 12 months. Of course, I didn’t hear any complaints from recipients in 2009, when their benefits remained unchanged while the CPI dropped; nor was there any complaint when benefits were “over-indexed” between 2007 and 2008. This is a classic illustration of asymmetry in perception-“what’s mine is mine, what’s yours is negotiable.” Proposals to give a special $250 increase this year to recipients are politicians’ sop to this perception bias.
Wouldn’t the country be better off if politicians explained why the current system makes sense rather than catering to people’s mis-perceptions? Or if they were honest and modified the system to allow for benefit cuts when the CPI drops? (Fat chance of that!)