Thanks. Great write up. I had read Wolf’s article when he published it. But I clearly was otherwise distracted and missed some of his more salient points. Seeing them highlighted here makes me glad I missed them previously as then I would have been mad twice.
One thing I did think about when reading his article was that COLA for SS (and as you point out many other things, including private pensions, union contracts, etc) are tied to CPI.
It’s actually worse than you presented, if that’s even possible.
What almost nobody knows is that the govt does not base COLA on an entire fiscal year, which of course would be the logical thing to do. But logic and govt rarely mesh.
Instead, they base COLA on three month period of July-September.
Sept 2024 was also a big outlier month in OER. And they did it again in 2025. Both of these drops had essentially a 3x impact on COLA because they take that 3 month period and pretend that’s what CPI was for the entire year.
You can see this most recently when the 2022 CPI was over 9% but the COLA increase was 5.9, because inflation tapered off in the last quarter. Same is true for 2023 as CPI tailed off at year end.
In 1995 the Boskin Commission determined that CPI overstated inflation by 1.1%. And both Greenspan and Boskin were on record about the need to lower future SS COLA adjustments. So they used an official commission to get what they wanted and have been cooking the books ever since. Hundreds of billions stolen from every group reliant on govt CPI for COLA adjustments over the past 5 decades.
They use the final quarter of the year for a reason. And it’s not to benefit the populace.
It's interesting to hear you say it is even worse than I presented because I held nothing back and was sure it would be too much for some; but it is what it is. (I'm big on that saying--take my truth straight up, whether I like it or not.)
I didn't even know what you just shared about COLA. Cherry-picking the season. I actually had no idea on that one. I just always figured they went by the full year's inflation.
Nope. And if you didn’t know it, think how small the number of people who do know it. It’s actually built right into the 1972 SS Amendments, which went into effect in 1975.
I queried Claude and Grok and despite an extensive search of the Congressional record and Robert Ball’s extensive aricle on the subject, there is not a single mention of the single quarter calculation issue.
My take. Either it wasn’t seen as an important enough issue to be addressed in a major piece of legislation.
Or, it was deliberately inserted as a technical specification into a must pass bill to raise the debt ceiling. The Church Amendment (cOLA adjustment part of that) was introduced on June 28 1972. Passed both chambers June 30. Signed into
law July 1. Obviously no time for reading, proper debate, witness questioning.
Given how quickly it was done and the massive impact it has had over the past 50 years, it’s hard to believe it was just convenience as the motivating factor.
Probably does. Sad to think, though, that the above criticisms are now considered whiney and liberal by those who think they are conservative; because if it was Obama or Biden pulling all this stuff that I just wrote about with the numbers and selling the presidency, they would be absolutely incensed for all the same reasons I just wrote out. Weird world.
Thanks. Great write up. I had read Wolf’s article when he published it. But I clearly was otherwise distracted and missed some of his more salient points. Seeing them highlighted here makes me glad I missed them previously as then I would have been mad twice.
One thing I did think about when reading his article was that COLA for SS (and as you point out many other things, including private pensions, union contracts, etc) are tied to CPI.
It’s actually worse than you presented, if that’s even possible.
What almost nobody knows is that the govt does not base COLA on an entire fiscal year, which of course would be the logical thing to do. But logic and govt rarely mesh.
Instead, they base COLA on three month period of July-September.
Sept 2024 was also a big outlier month in OER. And they did it again in 2025. Both of these drops had essentially a 3x impact on COLA because they take that 3 month period and pretend that’s what CPI was for the entire year.
You can see this most recently when the 2022 CPI was over 9% but the COLA increase was 5.9, because inflation tapered off in the last quarter. Same is true for 2023 as CPI tailed off at year end.
In 1995 the Boskin Commission determined that CPI overstated inflation by 1.1%. And both Greenspan and Boskin were on record about the need to lower future SS COLA adjustments. So they used an official commission to get what they wanted and have been cooking the books ever since. Hundreds of billions stolen from every group reliant on govt CPI for COLA adjustments over the past 5 decades.
They use the final quarter of the year for a reason. And it’s not to benefit the populace.
You cannot hate these people enough.
Thank you.
It's interesting to hear you say it is even worse than I presented because I held nothing back and was sure it would be too much for some; but it is what it is. (I'm big on that saying--take my truth straight up, whether I like it or not.)
I didn't even know what you just shared about COLA. Cherry-picking the season. I actually had no idea on that one. I just always figured they went by the full year's inflation.
Nope. And if you didn’t know it, think how small the number of people who do know it. It’s actually built right into the 1972 SS Amendments, which went into effect in 1975.
I queried Claude and Grok and despite an extensive search of the Congressional record and Robert Ball’s extensive aricle on the subject, there is not a single mention of the single quarter calculation issue.
My take. Either it wasn’t seen as an important enough issue to be addressed in a major piece of legislation.
Or, it was deliberately inserted as a technical specification into a must pass bill to raise the debt ceiling. The Church Amendment (cOLA adjustment part of that) was introduced on June 28 1972. Passed both chambers June 30. Signed into
law July 1. Obviously no time for reading, proper debate, witness questioning.
Given how quickly it was done and the massive impact it has had over the past 50 years, it’s hard to believe it was just convenience as the motivating factor.
It really has to suck to be a whiney liberal.
What is the whining and liberal part?
Probably does. Sad to think, though, that the above criticisms are now considered whiney and liberal by those who think they are conservative; because if it was Obama or Biden pulling all this stuff that I just wrote about with the numbers and selling the presidency, they would be absolutely incensed for all the same reasons I just wrote out. Weird world.