CPI Composition

[lehighguy]

We spend twice as much on health care as the next highest industrialized nation. We also spend more on education, and a million other things.

P.S. Americans spent more on chewing gum then the 2004 presidential election.

[DcifrThs]

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you're pretty funny. 1st you say cpi is not underestimating inflation, now you're saying that ok it is underestimating it, but that's a good thing. lol.

btw, I don't think it's true that cpi overstated inflation before, although that is not a hard opinion, it just seems like common sense.



you're right. you know more than people that study it and biases they've found. look them up, here they are outlined in the shortest possible form:

Link

NOTE: this cite just summarizes the bias in the shortest manner i could find. innumerable papers written by authors for academic journals can be found and if i had access to JSTOR i'd cite them. you can look online for BLS and other ("biased") sites to find out the level of work put into finding those biases.

previously, i didn't htink it was understated based on reading those studies. reading greenspan's objection agreed with those studies (i.e. it was overstated). now that they seem to have changed the construction, it could be understated now, or, it could be close to even. i'd bet now though it is likely to be understated. but at least i'm gathering info and forming an intelligent opinion based on facts and studies.

glad you think i'm funny and can provide you with amusement.

Barron

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btw, I'm not making fun of you personally or anything. I think we have to recognize this little paradigm of denying something exists, and then when it's proven to exist, to say that it is good.

for example, the torture debate, at first oh no no torture no way we're americans, then the whole waterboarding stuff came out, then it was like, well ok, we do torture (legislation was passed legalizing torture even though it was called someting else), BUT NOW IT"S GOOD.

I think the same thing will happen with the north american union, right now everyone is still denying it even though there is a summit in canada right now to further it, most americans the next they will hear will be, ok , yes the NAU exists, *but it is good*.

notice the main thing is that the chance to debate is kind of taken away, eg, do we really want to be part of a NAU? that question should be being asked right now, since they are implementing it, but they are going to deny deny deny it even exists until it is a done deal, at which point it will shift to , it does exist, it's here, it's good, it's a done deal, get used to it.

It's total propaganda and a mockery of our american democratic system.

so anyway that's where i was coming from.

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i think the discussion we were having about CPI and the evolution of my views on it are quite different than the examples of the paradigm you provide.

Barron

[clowntable]

I don't remember where I read it but I read a pretty good explaination of "the problems with the CPI" swhich used supermarket baskets to explain it.
Might have been in "Economics in One Lesson"