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Politics : Ask Michael Burke -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: BGR who wrote (62856)	6/21/1999 10:47:00 AM
From: Freedom Fighter	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 132070

BGR, This really isn't a big deal for me but just as part of conversation I'll tell you some of things that bother me about the CPI calcs. I realize there are some things in the other direction too. 1. I've never understood the "food" substitution argument. Some people substitute because they can't afford the preferred item. And even if they can why should that affect the calculation. 2. There's a lot of talk about quality improvements. How about this side of the coin? My taxes and (tax rates for some) keep going up but the public sector services and quality are not keeping up. Public schools stink, roads and bridges are worse off than they were a 20 years ago,... I can go on. I suspect that the public sector quality issues and tax spending are left out of the equation. 3. I have an alarm on my car, my home, etc... They say if I get it cheaper that means things are better. I say 20 years ago I didn't have to buy them. This is another quality issue. 4. They changed the real estate calculation to use rents instead of home values, but IMO they should use both. 5. The weights are a trailing number. EX. If healthcare becomes a progressively larger percentage of the pie and inflation is rapid in that area, by the time they up the weight to capture it, free markets have started to correct it. They miss a portion of the inflation and raise the weight just in time to make things look better. Wayne