“But they claim there has been no significant inflation for the last forty years. Bullpucky.”
If you’re into math, it’s fascinating to track the changes made to the methodology used in calculating the CPI. Hedonic regression, substitution (for a market basket of goods fer chrissake), the newly proposed chain-averaging (already used to calculate the GDP deflator).
If we calculated the current CPI with the methodology used in the 1980’s the current inflation rate would be around 6%, and if we calculated the CPI with the methodology used in the 1970’s the current inflation rate would be around 10%.
That’s quite a bit different than the absurd claim from the current CPI that we’re dealing with 1%ish inflation.
There are proposed changes in the works that would further underestimate inflation.
The BLS figures for unemployment have undergone similar revisions in methodology calculated to intentionally under-report unemployment. If we used Carter-Era methodologies to calculate both inflation and unemployment, the current “misery index” would hovering around 30ish (versus Carter’s highest of 22).
Beware politicians that redefine the yardsticks used to measure their job performance.
If there were an opposition party in the US, or a free press, inflation and the deceptive reporting would be an issue.
Based on the projections for healthcare costs, the government should be excluding them from inflation calculations any day.