The Cassandra article is both right and wrong, the story is complicated, but the point about lowered interest rates goes like this: * higher interest rates are

The Cassandra article is both right and wrong, the story is complicated, but the point about lowered interest rates goes like this: * higher interest rates are disliked by private capital because they a) cause competition for capital b) require higher taxes to fund interest payments c) induce higher "erosion" of large collections of capital * lower interest rates are liked by private capital for precisely the complementary reasons a) interest is not competition for capital b) require lower taxes c) induce less "erosion" Higher interest rates in an idealized sense are perhaps better, but in our current environment, it is generally not feasible to raise them, absent a convincing story for growth to match. Funding the future is hard, and the balance between entitlement and resource governance is hard, but in the US, in the game between individual capital-oriented private interests and generic public interests, public interests generally lose. This is by far the largest contributing factor to pension "decimation." Finally, small point- for individuals, using macro-reported inflation is, to a first approximation, a mistake. What matters to an individual are changes in actual cost of living, which are historically extremely localized.