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To: All

The CPI methodology is pretty good. It’s public.

They survey a lot of people and ask, in effect, what % of each month’s expenditures are various categories. These %s are all averaged together.

Then they send staff out to get a measurement of the prices of those categories.

Blend the two items together and you can quote inflation.

If you can think of a better way, they open their process up periodically for suggested improvements and then do internal evaluation. They HAVE made changes over the years.

The Fed’s target is 2%. Peak inflation in the past couple of years was about 8%. It is now 4%. That is a reduction. The Fed is quietly doing QT, which is rather more important than tightening rates. But there have been occasions when they stopped. And when they did, inflation resumed.

There does not have to be a cure for this. The US can fail. No law of nature says the US is forever.


15 posted on 08/31/2023 10:44:52 AM PDT by Owen
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To: Owen

I was looking through a newspaper archive the other day and came across a grocery store ad from 1963.

Flour, 5-lb. bag .......49¢
Hamburger, 3 lbs. .....99¢
T-bone steak, per lb. ..59¢

Most young people today wouldn’t recognize the “¢” symbol but it was once widely used in the days of silver-backed dollars.


24 posted on 09/01/2023 6:26:35 AM PDT by Max in Utah (A nation can survive its fools, and even the ambitious. But it cannot survive treason from within.)
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