{"id":58015,"date":"2021-05-24T05:46:35","date_gmt":"2021-05-24T10:46:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=58015"},"modified":"2021-05-24T05:46:35","modified_gmt":"2021-05-24T10:46:35","slug":"the-cpi-revisited-and-its-failure-to-reflect-true-inflation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=58015","title":{"rendered":"The CPI Revisited And Its Failure To Reflect True Inflation"},"content":{"rendered":"
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The CPI Revisited And Its Failure To Reflect True Inflation<\/a><\/h3>\n
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The cost of living numbers prepared by the Bureau of Labor Statistics are highly misleading. Currently, the government understates inflation by using a formula\u00a0<\/i>based on the concept of a \u201cconstant level of satisfaction\u201d that evolved during the first half of the 20th century in academia. This extended into the BLS re-weightings sales outlets such as discount or mass merchandisers with Main Street shops. Those promoting this change claimed it was simply another way to measure inflation and it still reflected the true cost of living.\u00a0\u00a0<\/b><\/div>\n

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The fact is, politicians and those behind this system created it as a way to reduce the cost of living adjustments for government payments to Social Security recipients, etc. By moving to a substitution-based index and weakening other constant-standard-of-living ties those reporting inflation have muddied the water as to just how much we are being impacted by inflation.<\/b>\u00a0The general argument used to promote this change was that changing relative costs of goods results in consumers substituting less-expensive goods for more expensive goods.<\/div>\n
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Allowing for a substitution of goods within the formerly “fixed-basket” supposedly allows the consumer flexibility in obtaining a \u201cconstant level of satisfaction.” This adjustment to the inflation measure was touted as more appropriate for the GDP concept in measuring shifting demand and weighting actual consumption.\u00a0Other tricks were also used to give the illusion of less inflation. In cases where the quality of the product are deemed by the government to be “improved” prices in the CPI, calculations are now adjusted lower to offset the higher quality.<\/b>\u00a0Extending this idea the Baskin Commission Report, December 4, 1996, actually used steak and chicken for its substitution example.<\/div>\n
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\u2026click on the above link to read the rest of the article\u2026<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The CPI Revisited And Its Failure To Reflect True Inflation The cost of living numbers prepared by the Bureau of Labor Statistics are highly misleading. Currently, the government understates inflation by using a formula\u00a0based on the concept of a \u201cconstant level of satisfaction\u201d that evolved during the first half of the 20th century in academia. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[27339,926,26559,3279,1055,172,379,426,1056,2084],"class_list":["post-58015","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics","tag-advancing-time-blog","tag-bls","tag-bruce-wilds","tag-bureau-of-labor-statistics","tag-consumer-price-index","tag-cpi","tag-government","tag-inflation","tag-statistical-manipulation","tag-statistics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58015","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=58015"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58015\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":58016,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58015\/revisions\/58016"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=58015"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=58015"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=58015"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}