Just as a little point of fact, though:
Quote: Retirees, for example, get their Social Security payments adjusted for inflation. Few workers today enjoy that benefit.
Actually, there hasn't been a cost-of-living increase for two or three years, despite *huge* increases in the prices of things like food and fuel, especially in this past year. Part of the issue there relates to the metrics they calculate with, (I'm a little hazy on the details at this point, but I think a big part of the calculation involved home prices, though it's hard to imagine why: falling property values don't generally translate to lower mortgage payments or rent bills for Granny or anyone, ...Prescription prices may have actually stabilized in there, too, ....and in response to increasing costs, people actually cutting back consumption in response to higher bills and prices may have depressed that figure as well, though you can only cut back so far in some areas, (I eat like a bird, often to unhealthy extents, as it is, but I'm definitely feeling the food insecurity, just when I need to be keeping my strength up. I'm not even in trouble, yet, really, but yikes, I'm getting too old for this. )
Anyway, there's unfortunately ways in which the real cost of living and the 'adjustments for inflation' don't always coincide. Flat/falling wages and increasing costs are of course a key part of the problem for the workers, and the economy at large. Which actually has a lot of bad knock-on effects all around. (People forget that though some draw big divisions between wage-earners and people dependent on social services, economically, there's a great deal of interconnectedness there: if Granny or someone like me is lucky enough to have relatives willing and able to help out, then where the benefits don't meet expenses, it can be on the wage-earners to try and make up the slack. (Out of their flat 'real wages' or retirement funds or other things that could be saved for or spent on in the local economies..... and there we are with another economy-suppressing little cycle. )
The real problem is actually *everyone's* cost of living going up, and, yeah, the workers' share of the pie is stagnant/falling. I do think the solution has to be putting more of us to work doing things that add lasting value to the world and economy, rather than just consume over and over. I think the whole economy is just too much of selling each other stuff, or things that aren't even 'stuff,' but numbers about other numbers, and no wonder it is so drained by all that 'profit growth' at the top. Our civilization takes *energy* and resources, a lot of which aren't getting any more plentiful or cheaper, and aren't going to... and demand probably won't go down the more environmental destruction and pollution there is to cope with. ...especially as it makes our health more and more problematic to maintain. So what really has to happen is that we need to get together as a nation (at least) and as communities and put more of all that input into things that are economically and ecologically sustainable. That seems to be the only way to really start things in a better direction.
I just don't think there's a way to really starve or skim or cut or belt-tighten our way out of this, especially if the aim is just to go back to over-consumption without really investing in ourselves and a better future. We've got to use what we've got and make something better, not just try and convert the world's resources and human effort into bigger numbers on a balance sheet over and over.
Cause in a way, trying to diet one's way out of starvation, so to speak, isn't 'saving ten or twenty percent,' ....it's wasting much of what went into the other eighty or ninety. Including time and people's lives.
It's always been part of my little dream to be part of building something of some lasting value: until recently, I thought this'd involve sweetie and I putting down roots in a community that's ready and willing to start changing some of these things. And I really watched a lot of my part of that sort of getting nickel-and-dimed down to slower and slower progress, till, you know, the real jobs just really dried up for sweetie, (whose field that we were working on her degree in was among the last to really have that happen...) and I'm sort of looking at struggling-to-maintain-survival mode, possibly instead of managing some kind of productivity. (And at least being able to say, 'Well, I'm helping my dear one save some of the trees or something.'
It's been pretty clear from my perspective that where we've had the top of the economic pyramid continuing to try and stonewall social and sustainability progress or even roll it back, practically immobilizing the whole economy by sitting on it, ....that, well, life's been going on, or trying to, and it's not been cost-free just cause someone wants to keep it in a holding pattern so they can try and consolidate excessive privilege, and keep making more and more profit off a pie that's not getting bigger: it's like with the bank fees: if the government tries to say, 'You're suppressing local economies with excessive swipe fees, ' the big banks say, Well now we 'have' to take it out with even more-excessive fees direct from the consumer. It's like, 'No, you dont' 'have' to,' you *choose* to. And then turn around and say 'And also, we demand even less regulation and more cuts to things that benefit the people, cause we want more tax cuts for ourselves, claiming this will start helping the economy any minute now.'
I actually just don't see how the Wall Street people and ('corporate persons') expect more of the same to turn things around, or if they even care or can help themselves. The people really do have to start standing for something else. There's no reason our own government should be bought out to act so against the interests of most of us: there does need to be a better balance, if we expect the country to be vital.