How, for example, do political leaders grapple with the gradually growing fiscal cost of National Superannuation, or encourage rational public discussion of the issue, when a news item in one of our largest daily newspapers could say, about the present Government’s decision to maintain the real value of National Superannuation by indexing it to the CPI rather than to wages, “up to half the superannuitants in New Zealand could be pushed below the poverty line when their pensions are reduced tomorrow”.33 I suspect it is true that the great majority of superannuitants today believe that their National Superannuation payments have been reduced or are about to be reduced, and yet of course economists know that that is not true, either in nominal terms or in real terms.
It is true in relative terms of course, but a reduction in relative terms is assuredly not what most people think of  3  “Elderly pushed into poverty”, The Dominion, 31 March 1999. BIS Review 89/1999  4  when they talk about a reduction in a benefit.