[lbo-talk] thoughts on CPI?

Joanna 123hop at comcast.net
Sun Jan 20 12:58:31 PST 2008


The official CPI underestimates the actual CPI for two reasons

1. A lot of gov entitlement progs are tied to CPI, so if CPI is high, they have to spend more money. 2. Publishing the actual CPI would have made it much harder to pursue the inflationary/easy-money policies that have been in place for a while.

Joanna

Andy F wrote:
> Could any economists comment on whether the CPI is bogus? I'm
> referring to its supposedly underestimating inflation due to
> substitutions (steak/hamburger), hedonic tweaking, figuring increasing
> home computer power offsets cost of health care, that kind of thing.
>
> Most of the criticism I've read tends to be associated with
> goldbuggery, permabearism, and general rantishness, so a level-headed
> left perspective would be appreciated. I'm aware that this might have
> been done to death, so I'd be happy with a link to a summary.
>
>
> Thanks,
>



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