There is no hope for the economy without inflation, which makes CPI adjusting rather pointed

[cthulu2016]

All estimates of the effect of adjusting the CPI measure assume very low inflation going forward... historically, absurdly low inflation.

And those projections are probably accurate. The global economy is broken, and fixing it would kill the 1% golden goose (persistently low inflation will continue the drain of the world's wealth into banking above all other human pursuits) so it is probably correct to expect a generation of low inflation and low global GDP.

But if the economy ever does recover, inflation will be a factor and COLAs will be a prime driver in the direction of reducing wealth/income inequality.

Lowering the potential effect of COLAs in advance is lose-lose for real people.

If the economy recovers you'll lose ground to inflation.

If the economy doesn't recover you'll lose ground to stagnation and unemployment.

Obama's proposal that the minimum wage have a COLA is very pro-people. (And will not pass) See... this is not just about SS. If we did have a minimum wage COLA it would really matter, a lot, how the government defined inflation.

We (people) should be positioned to benefit on the off chance the global economy does recover, a process that requires that some substantial inflation expectations develop)

(In case that last part seems controversial, I defer to the Professor...)

we are currently suffering from inadequate demand, but can’t get the interest rate any lower because of the zero lower bound. So in that sense interest rates are too high, which means that it would be good to raise expected inflation, and also that there’s a case for temporary fiscal stimulus.

http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/04/12/simple-natural-goodness/

[cthulu2016]

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