Indexing Social Security benefits to automatically and annually adjust to compensate for the erosion in their value due to inflation was a strategy used by both political parties to garner support from elderly constituents. Everyone realized that indexing would increase benefits but no one predicted that the inflation in the 1970s would lead to Question 3 options: extraordinary decreases in Social Security benefits that would impede rates of inflation extraordinary decreases in Social Security benefits that would exceed rates of inflation extraordinary increases in Social Security benefits that would impede rates of inflation extraordinary increases in Social Security benefits that would exceed rates of inflation