[khelus]

...Personally, I think we did that years ago. Google Hedonics. It’s fascinating.

ROFL

Good ol' hedonics or quality adjustments to the CPI decreasing the actual cost of an item. In other words you did't actually pay what you paid.

In government speak: "...hedonic price indexes are simply statistical tools for developing standardized per unit prices for goods, such as computers, whose quality and characteristics are changing rapidly."

Now look up owners rent equivalence, chained dollars, intervention analysis, etc.

Conveniently core inflation devoid of the cost of food and energy is used to evaluate the effectiveness of the fed.

[cuban leaf]

There is a simple explanation of hedonics in the video I supplied and I offer a “readers digest version of that here:

Imagine a tv cost $300 last year, but this years model has a sharper screen. The Government says that makes it worth $100 more, even though it is still sold for $300. So the government says that the GDP went up $100 for every set sold, even though the price is the same.

So, you say, that means the CPI went up $100 too, right?

Nope. Now that you are getting a $400 set for $300, it means the price went DOWN by $100.

So, GDP is up $100 while CPI goes DOWN $100 when, in fact, no money difference occurred at all.

This means that they can show that the economy grew (good news) while the CPI was lowered. And that means Social Security, wages and other benefits which see increases triggered by CPI increases will not increase.

I have not taken the stats seriously for some time.