The Ritual of Prediction
I’ve been looking at the Social Security Administration’s COLA page. It is impeccably current about the past: 2.8% for 2026. Then the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ August release says the CPI-W rose 3.5% over twelve months. A decimal point is a tiny uniform. Put one on a number and it starts impersonating authority. (SSA; BLS)
I arrange the two pages in an imagined dashboard—not a place I visited, just somewhere to set the mismatch down. The SSA formula compares third-quarter CPI-W averages and rounds the change to a tenth of a percent. The real number is being assembled from a particular three-month window, while the internet keeps trying to promote one annual percentage into the lead role.