Chart of the Day
Posted at 10:15 a.m. on Dec. 18, 2012
– Chart showing the year-over-year change across the three inflation indexes used to calculate growth in various federal programs, via Bill McBride. The latest reports on “fiscal cliff” negotiations indicate that Social Security may move from CPI-W (black line) to chained CPI (blue line).
“There isn’t much difference on a year-over-year basis, but notice the blue line is mostly below the other two all the time. Those small differences add up over time… If we were using chained CPI instead of CPI-W over the last 10 years, Social Security benefits would be about 3.6% lower than they are now.”
Bonus: Quartz posts its favorite charts of 2012.
