Consumer price index fix
may affect U.S. expats here

Dear A.M. Costa Rica:

Your staff article and David G Housman, who is cited in Friday's article about impacts to U.S. expats here of the fiscal cliff disaster, are incorrect in stating that most expats here are unlikely to be very impacted by whatever resolution is found to the "fiscal cliff." 

While there has been no final agreement, President Obama has already agreed to implement the "chained Consumer Price Index" to government programs, and, because this will impact the poor and middle class most, this federal spending-saving measure is highly unlikely to be opposed by the Republicans.  Chained CPI would affect cost-of-living adjustments in response to inflation for Social Security, Medicare, and federal government pensions, among other programs.  While the impact of chained CPI would be modest at first, they would increase over time.  Such effects over time are described in a CNN analysis:

"For Social Security beneficiaries, the effect would barely be felt in a one-year period. In most years, chained CPI differs from the other inflation measure very little -- only by about 0.3 percentage points, according to the Social Security Administration's chief actuary.

"This year, for example, that would shave about $4 a month off the cost of living increase for the average Social Security recipient. Currently slated for a $21-dollar-a-month increase, the average Social Security recipient would instead receive a boost of only $17 a month....

"But over time, the effect is compounded, and that has advocates for retirees up in arms.

"Consider a person who retired at age 65 in 2000. If chained CPI had been used to calculate his annual cost of living adjustments, his monthly Social Security checks would total around $1,880 now, $106 less than under current law.

"The longer a person lives, the larger the effect becomes. According to AARP, retirees lucky enough to live to 92 would lose a month's worth of benefits."

Effects would be similar for federal pensioners such as myself.


Meat production consumes
grain and creates pollution

Dear A.M. Costa Rica:

Re: Despite future need, food harvests are not keeping pace, study finds
 
The article mentioned; "The demand for food crops is growing, but experts say the world’s harvests are not keeping pace. People are becoming richer and eating more meat, which takes more grain to produce"
 
The ultimate problem is over population but that is not what this article is discussing.  Unfortunately, the richer First World countries and advancing Third World countries, will eat us into oblivion because of their need to consume so much meat.  

Here are a few stats from the U.S. Department of the Interior's USGS.  One pound of chicken requires 500 gallons of water,  one hamburger OVER 4,000 gallons, one egg 400 gallons, one pound of wheat 110 gallons, one pound of corn 110 gallons. Water is also becoming a precious resource to consider.  The Food and Agricultural Organization states in 1998;  "About 60 per cent of the world's agricultural land is used for grazing some 360 million cattle and more than 600 million sheep and goats."  That figure has grown since then.  

"If all the grain currently fed to livestock in the United States were consumed directly by people, the number of people who could be fed would be nearly 800 million," according to the Ecology Department at Cornell University's College of Agriculture and Life Sciences.  It takes seven pounds of grain to produce one pound of meat.
 
Remember the entire cattle industry, throughout the world, produces more global warming effects then all the planes, trains, cars, trucks and ships on this planet.  The pollution run off from factory farms in the United States causes more waterway (river) pollution in the United States then all the other industries combined.

There are always solutions.  We just need to change some habits.