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

To: Don Lloyd who wrote (69486)	10/24/1999 10:26:00 AM
From: Freedom Fighter	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 132070

Don, As always, you gave me a lot to think about. >>If by inflation, you were to simply mean a time rate of change for the historical prices of a limited number of specific products, then an algorithm for calculating inflation could at least be defined, but the results would not be very useful due to a continuous product evolution in both characteristics and variety.<< Here's an example. New technologies often cost a lot more than the one they replace. After a short period of time the price starts coming down. I'm not sure what this represents, but I suspect we're not measuring it properly. Here's others. It's often impossible to get tickets to significant sporting events for the face value of the tickets. Sometimes you have to pay a large multiple of the original asking price. That wasn't always the case. I asked the BLS about that a few years ago. They said that scalping was illegal so it shouldn't be included. I think it's a free market transaction and definitely should. I used to be able to see many sporting events on network television. Now I need cable to see them. They measure changes in the cost of cable not my added expenditure. Now we've gone to the more expensive pay per view. The quality of public schools in NYC is way worse than is was when I was a boy, but my taxes have gone up. Where do government services, roads, bridges, public safety, and quality of life fit? That's part of why I've thrown in the towel on CPI etc... The list is endless, as are the complications. Wayne