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

To: Les H who wrote (77804)	3/14/2000 1:46:00 AM
From: Simba	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 132070

Les: This reminds me of the haggling I went through to purchase my car a few years back before internet days. I was down to choosing one of two cars. The car I wanted had exactly the same features as the other one except for three things, it had a color I liked, its Manufacturer logo was gold-plated (the other car had a silver plating). The price was a few hundered dollars more. I really did not care much for the gold-plating. But i did not prefer the color on the silver plated car. After telling the sales guy I did not really care for the gold plating, he made the sale of the gold-plated car for the price of the silver plated car. If this kind of nonsense gets considered as "added features" and "more value for the same money" bull shit thus deflating the CPI one can imagine how messed up the economic picture could be with these false statistics. To think many union wotrkers and retirees and low wage workers get paid COLA (cost of living adjustments) based on this cooked up CPI statistics, these workers no wonder will see less and less value on their paycheck for things they really need and utilize, not gold plating on car emblems for same price. Simba

To: Les H who wrote (77804)	3/14/2000 9:42:00 AM
From: BGR	Respond to of 132070

We are talking about a hypothetical basket of goods and services here, Les. No one has the option of choosing that anyway. It is a statistical model and doesn't fit any particular person's lifestyle exactly.

To: Les H who wrote (77804)	3/14/2000 10:03:00 AM
From: Skeeter Bug	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 132070

>>That is irrelevant since not all features are those one has the option to pay or not to pay for. Applying hedonic pricing to CPI which is used to index payments makes the CPI that much less useful. << les, alan.com agrees with you now that his manipulation of numbers has gone awry. alan.com doesn't trust the cpi anymore. he doesn't trust gdp anymore. he doesn't productivity anymore. why? he knows he bastardized them all when he thought they were too low or too high and the equations are now yielding results he doesn't like. better change them again... and quickly ;-)