A little noticed aspect of the fiscal cliff deal between congressional Republicans and the White House involved the establishment of a new way to calculate the federal inflation rate. Now we will have the so-called “chained consumer price index.” The chained CPI literally assumes that, as products increase in price, we don’t have to actually counts them as having increased in price because consumers can replace those more expensive items with cheaper substitutes. This allows the government to claim that inflation is lower or nonexistent, thus denying recipients of Social Security and other federal entitlement programs their right to a cost of living increase.
Proletariat Steak
Ted Rall
Ted Rall is a syndicated political cartoonist for Andrews McMeel Syndication and WhoWhatWhy.org and Counterpoint. He is a contributor to Centerclip and co-host of "The Final Countdown" talk show on Radio Sputnik. He is a graphic novelist and author of many books of art and prose, and an occasional war correspondent. He is, recently, the author of the graphic novel "2024: Revisited."
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Fantastic, Ted. Instead of stating the obvious (that our quality of life is steadily decreasing as the rich get filthierly richer), we just pretend everything is the same through substitution down. It is a race to the bottom in all areas. Of course, the quality of food has been deteriorating for awhile anyway. If you truly take time to eat quality food, you spend a lot more.
The public commentary about acceptance of lowered expectations for Americans has been obvious for some time. (Not for the right reasons – like dealing with climate change.)
Now “Democratic” web sites have begun lowering expectations for the outcome of the 2014 mid-term elections because of gerrymandering.
This with not a single word that Obama’s rehabilitation of the party he was elected (by 10 million votes) to vanquish put off so many 2008 supporters that they stayed away from the polls in 2010. Of course, that was a census year that mandated the redistricting process, which allows the gerrymandering, if you are fool enough to scare Dems from the polls and relinquish even more states to neo-fascist control.
Is that proletariat or presidential pudding?
Most of the people I know in the USA are able to “get by” along with lowered expectations – no one is really going to do much of anything until many more people hit rock bottom. Like Brad Pitt said at the end of his last movie – the USA is not a country (with people that care about each other), it’s a business…
Shouldn’t someone be lecturing all of us to stop whining? Ted! Get off your ass and start raising your own cow, dammit. Why, when I was starting out, I had to eat sawdust. And that was while I was holding down two full-time jobs AND maintaining a 4.01 GPA. I graduated magna cum mega laude. Work smarter, not harder, blah, blah, blah, strawman, blah, blah …
Yeah, Alex, I really do hate that. That attitude is what has made America a real turd basket. A few years ago, when I was helping out a significantly younger cartoonist, some older cartoonists were telling me that I should lay off, since after all, it took me a long time to get my career off the ground so why shouldn’t he have to go through the same thing? The thing is, I thought it sucked at the time, so why would I want anyone else to go through the same thing?
OK, alex, stop whining and start eating «steak» – after all, beats the hell out of sawdust ! Just be grateful for those chains !…
Henri
I just remembered, Ted, that you owe me a piece of artwork for winning my bet with you about the 2012 presidential election. Shall I just email you directly?
Aggie: We have spoken. Art is on the way.