To all those who have been telling us for months . . .

[CTyankee]

158. I worship at the altar of Paul Krugman who has a basic disagreement with you on this.

I have never seen Krugman wrong on anything, and I have read him for over 10 years. I won't even try to paraphrase him but his outlook is not nearly as pessimistic as yours if we get busy on job creation which will create more revenue.

Chained CPI assumes that the people it affects have a "basket of goods" in which they can swap out more expensive items with less expensive ones when cuts to income arrive. This ignores the fact that for seniors health care is one of those basket items that cannot be swapped out for a generic or cheaper brand, like bread in a supermarket. These cost items in the seniors' basket are inflating. Therefore it crowds out seniors' buying power in other areas of the economy where we need their spending to help fuel growth.

So while I agree with you that there are many things that need to be done, the chained CPI idea is not a good one for the basic reason stated above.