Inflation is flat, but it costs more to live

Mr. Knudsen wrote that people should provide for their own retirement, not rely on Social Security and are not entitled to cost of living adjustments. Mr. Knudson is quite literally correct and spectacularly wrong in the real world.

Probably the employees of Enron thought they were providing for their own retirement when they were required to invest in Enron stock through their 401(k) plans. Imagine their surprise when their retirement turned into the personal possessions they were able to fit into cardboard boxes when the fraud collapsed?

Imagine the surprise of people who thought their home would provide a tidy Reverse Mortgage income until the subprime ripoff ripped all of the real estate industry segments to shreds?

Imagine their surprise when Wall Street sold trash investments based on trash paper and insured by the same trash that was sold in the first place and was put in their retirement portfolios by greedy Brokers.

Imagine their surprise when their retirement funds followed the Dow down from 14,000 to 8,000.

Imagine their surprise to wake up one morning and find that their brokers had invested their money in the $50 billion that disappeared in into Bernie Madoff's pockets.

Imagine their surprise when the company they had worked decades for had dumped their pension obligations on the government who will pay at best half. Let's not forget the retiree health benefits that were wiped out in the same bankruptcy process.

Now these people have the temerity to ask for a Social Security cost of living adjustment when inflation is flat but everything from Medicare Premiums to food that they use every day keeps climbing.

Yes, try and imagine all of that. Are you a Republican by any chance?

James Prescott

Schaumburg