On Jan 20, 2008, at 3:05 PM, Doug Henwood wrote:
> ...The CPI may understate inflation by a point or so, and almost
> all the revisions and suggested revisions have been in the
> direction of lowering reported inflation, but it's far from
> "bogus."...
"A point or so" each year doesn't sound like much, but over the 15 years since the first Clinton presidency that amounts to about 20 percent. Those of us on Social Security are each losing some $2,000 per year on account of underindexing. That aint peanuts. Since the revisions were openly motivated, at least in part, by calls to keep the cost of Social Security from increasing so fast, the term "bogus" seems far from unjustified.
Shane Mage
"When we read on a printed page the doctrine of Pythagoras that all things are made of numbers, it seems mystical, mystifying, even downright silly.
When we read on a computer screen the doctrine of Pythagoras that all things are made of numbers, it seems self-evidently true." (N. Weiner)