Its very subjective and it masks inflation. if they deem the quality of a good has gone up in quality or "happier user factor" by what they deem to be more value than the price has increased, they count it as deflation in the index, even if the price may have increased. do substitutions next! Those are even better
They didnt fudge it to be worse. im saying the fudged agregate remained the same, but the economy was just extra bad.
The BLS calculates food and energy prices. Over the last 12 months, the food at home index has risen 5.3 percent.....Over the last 12 months, the gasoline index has risen 9.7 percent while the household energy index has increased 1.2 percent. It just doesn't include them in their core inflation numbers, but it is not like they don't calculate them. http://www.bls.gov/news.release/cpi.nr0.htm As for the substitution effect, the CPI does not take that into account. The C-CPI does, but the C-CPI is not the index used for COLA. Here are some common misperceptions about the CPI. For the substitution bias, In January 1999, the BLS began using a geometric mean formula in the CPI that reflects the fact that consumers shift their purchases toward products that have fallen in relative price. Some critics charge that by reflecting consumer substitution the BLS is subtracting from the CPI a certain amount of inflation that consumers can "live with" by reducing their standard of living. This is incorrect: the CPI's objective is to calculate the change in the amount consumers need to spend to maintain a constant level of satisfaction. Specifically, in constructing the "headline" CPI-U and CPI-W, the BLS is not assuming that consumers substitute hamburgers for steak. Substitution is only assumed to occur within basic CPI index categories, such as among types of ground beef in Chicago. Hamburger and steak are in different CPI item categories, so no substitution between them is built into the CPI-U or CPI-W. As for hedonic pricing techniques to capture the change in quality of goods of over time, Critics often incorrectly assume that BLS only adjusts for quality increases, not for decreases, and that hedonic adjustments have a large downward impact on the CPI. On the contrary, BLS has used hedonic models in the CPI shelter and apparel components for roughly two decades, and on average hedonic adjustments usually increase the rate of change of those indexes. Since 1998, hedonic models have been introduced in several other components, mostly consumer durables such as personal computers and televisions, but these newer areas have a combined weight of only about one percent in the CPI. A recent article by BLS economists estimated that the hedonic models currently used in the CPI outside of the shelter and apparel areas have increased the annual rate of change of the All Items CPI, but by only about 0.005 percent per year. http://www.bls.gov/cpi/cpiqa.htm
Why not be moral enough to bear true witness to our own laws regarding employment at will? We could be solving for any poverty inducing effect resulting from structural forms of unemployment merely by subsidizing the least efficient to not provide labor input to the economy by directly competing with a surplus in labor beyond one percent. Unemployment compensation could be drawn for the equivalent to a minimum wage that simply conforms to at-will employment laws and that federal doctrine. Increasing the circulation of money in money based markets in that manner should engender a positive multiplier effect that has already been measured and weighed by the public sector. We could be improving the efficiency of our economy and lowering our tax burden at the same time, with that form of investment in the general welfare.
Actually, we find ourselves in that old cliche.."Who ya gonna believe, the government figures or your own lying eyes" Today most folk chose their own eyes.
Which is the point...Today's charlatan on the issue is every bit as guilty as any other President making his claim of shock worthless.
I personally think we need to overthrow the entire government and start over. I couldn't be worse than now and it is not getting any better. I don't think Obama is capable of turning things around.
I realize that your entitled to your opinion; but hopefully you'll advocate doing that by legal means (ie. via the US Constitution) and not by the use of violence. Otherwise, we'd be no better off then many of the so-called third world countries where there is no stability.
Some products in the basket of products change over time. Silver has also been used as money historically, and is not denied or disparaged for use as money to the several States of the Union. How does silver compare with both gold and the CPI? I would argue that inflation is an increase in the money supply without any gains in productivity to go along with that increase in the circulation of money in our money based markets.
I would argue that it's inflation even if the gains in productivity mask the price increases by simply counteracting deflation. Prices *should* be going lower, and that loss of deflation should be counted as part of inflation. As for the products in the basket of products, the CPI index misses a great deal. For example, as the price of steak goes up, people will eat lesser grade cuts and eventually switch to cheaper ground beef. As ground beef prices go up, people will switch to forms with more fillers or eat less. The government reports this under one basket of "food" or, perhaps, "meat", so that if, overall, people are spending just a bit more on meat but getting an inferior product, the government reports that as low inflation.
Why do you believe it is still inflationary, if there is no "inflation" of prices without more goods to go along with any increase in prices? In other words, do you still consider it inflation, if the basket of goods and the prices "balance" as before, only with different prices and a different amount of goods? Only truer forms supply side economics may deliver better governance at lower cost; why would anyone believe that should be the case under any form of demand side economics, other than competition? Competition alone does not solve for lower fuel prices during times of military conflict in the Middle East. In my opinion, there is only so much even a consumer price index can do. Why would anyone believe that a single commodity such as gold would do any better?
Continued Unemployment Claims at Record High In the week ending Jan. 24, the advance figure for seasonally adjusted initial claims was 588,000, an increase of 3,000 from the previous week's revised figure of 585,000. http://www.calculatedriskblog.com/2009/01/continued-unemployment-claims-at-record.html[/QUOTE] Bush was an idiot. When we were losing jobs under him he should've just said "well there are less people that want to work now so we will just make thos available jobs go away and ....tada!!! We have a lower unemployment rate" Obviously Obama is the smarter man as he has done this.... just juggle those numbers around and everything will be ok
Constitution allows for violence see: second ammendment. dont forget about the american revolution, the constitution itself would not exist without violent overthrow. i dont personally advocate violence though except in extreme circumstances. just saying.
