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

To: Terry Whitman who wrote (45517)	2/3/1999 9:09:00 AM
From: RealMuLan	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 132070

<<Economist Walter J. Williams, who runs the Shadow Bureau of Government Statistics in Hawthorne, N.J., reports that our annual inflation is not 1.6 percent, but 4.1 percent over last year if you use pre-Clinton methodology>> 4.1 percent, that comes close to my calculation<g>.

To: Terry Whitman who wrote (45517)	2/3/1999 9:27:00 AM
From: RealMuLan	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 132070

BLS will use another new method to calculate most basic indexes from Jan. 1999. So hopefully they can get even lower inflation rate <g>. See the following link. stats.bls.gov

To: Terry Whitman who wrote (45517)	2/3/1999 9:31:00 AM
From: Bonnie Bear	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 132070

It doesn't matter how they calculate the CPI...all they have to do is change the average standard of living to meet their objectives. The biggest component of inflation is housing and energy costs...especially housing...the gov gets around this by using "equivalent rent" numbers and averaging them over several years so the numbers used this year are the median value for a few years ago. They have stated that they consider urban housing prices to be a bubble so they are taken out. Never mind that most of the jobs are in urban areas. One of the legitimate problems the gov has is separating luxury items from necessities in the CPI...for instance, the average house size back in the 50s was about 800 square feet, now it's closer to 2000...so the cost per square foot has gone down..so should the gov count cost per square foot, or cost per dwelling? For myself, most of the things I use have been in a deflation since 1980 except housing...and taxes...I found a box of mid-80s stuff that had receipts and such..when I looked at them I was stunned to notice that the real cost increases in products, gas, etc were from an increase in taxes, fees and insurance, not on the basic commodity price. Even medical care prices have gone up largely due to the ever-increasing cost of malpractice insurance. Medicine, cars, even houses cost less elsewhere because other countries don't have our legal and insurance mafia. I sold a house last year and it took 60 pages of legal disclaimers on the standard sales forms, when I bought my first house in the mid-80s it was two pages. So in this sense, the gov has a tough task on its hands. Life is quite cheap once one gets out from the tax-and-insurance mafiosi. But these items are excluded from the CPI.

To: Terry Whitman who wrote (45517)	2/3/1999 11:13:00 AM
From: Knighty Tin	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 132070

TW, It has long been my contention that when inflation numbers didn't fit the scenario the govt. wanted, they changed the way the CPI and PPI are calculated. They definitely changed the calculations, but the reason why is some sort of flim flam that folks are different today and no longer eat or drink or drive cars or something. <G> They did the same thing with GDP, which is why it is GDP and not GNP any more. They want to do the same thing with the savings rates and the productivity numbers and the trade deficits, as those pesky numbers aren't behaving either. Whether or not this guy's calculations are accurate is something I don't know. I believe that the data that goes into the CPI and PPI calculations are public, as are the seaonality factors. MB