I always look for winners and losers when economic policy changes. People on fixed incomes will lose in the UK when the formula for the retail price index (the RPI, their version of the CPI) is calculated. (see here for the story).
Note that the issue is not whether the statistic better measures inflation. The statistic is used historically in determining many cost of living adjustments, a relic of the high inflation episodes in the 1970's. Institutional structures adapted to the RPI-based price adjustments over the decades. Now the system will be tweaked. The same process is happening in the US.
It's true that changing COLA will have a real impact on retirees, but it's important to note that the impact is going from an automatic 1% real increase in benefits per year to a steady level of real benefits. If the AARP feels that benefits should be increasing by 1% per year, they need to make the case for why we need to spend more on SS instead of insisting that they just want to keep things as they are by resisting the COLA adjustment. If we do want to increase SS benefits, what's the end goal? $20,000 per beneficiary per year? 25,000? How long should the increases last? The AARP seems to think the answer is indefinitely. Even if we do decide we want to keep increasing benefits, we should still switch to the better inflation measure and just say SS will grow at chained CPI + 1.
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