By Les Dunaway
On Tuesday, either the PC-censor was out sick or there’s a new kid who’s not yet trained – either way a piece was published that is worthy of attention
“Inflation Actually Near 10% Using Older Measure“.
What “older measure” you might ask. Well, the older measure based on actual arithmetic rather than “Hedonic Adjustments” .
The Bureau of Labor Statistics describes the process whereby the raw data is collected:
The CPIs are based on prices of food, clothing, shelter, and fuels, transportation fares, charges for doctors’ and dentists’ services, drugs, and other goods and services that people buy for day-to-day living. Prices are collected each month in 87 urban areas across the country from about 4,000 housing units and approximately 26,000 retail establishments-department stores, supermarkets, hospitals, filling stations, and other types of stores and service establishments.
What is not so clearly described is the mind-boggling contortions to which that data is them subjected to come up with the CPI – which, by the way, is then used to decide whether the millions of people on Social Security get a COLA! Did any of you get one the last two years? Were the ones you got before that the right amount? If they weren’t, does that amount to a negative COLA?
YES, as a matter of fact it does and this had been going on since 1980.
Here’s a good chart showing the old vs the “new and improved” CPI since 1981, along with a good discussion. What has this done to your standard of living? Keep in mind that each year’s error is compounding going forward.
This is yet another example of why the Stanford paper “Sovereign Fiscal Responsibility” defines sovereign fiscal responsibility as follows: “Our definition of fiscal responsibility involves three factors: a government’s current level of debt, the sustainability of government debt levels over time, and the degree to which governments act transparently and are accountable for their fiscal decisions.” [my emphasis] We had, in Georgia, this week an example of good government when our House Speaker David Ralston pulled a tax reform bill:
A tax reform proposal that began to take shape last year fell victim to uncertainty over math, House Speaker David Ralston told reporters after the surprise decision not to take up the bill.
Ralston, R-Blue Ridge, said majority Republicans had enough votes to pass the measure. But he said he and other legislative leaders couldn’t get comfortable with the numerical estimates surrounding the proposed tax cut following late changes aimed at ensuring the bill would reduce taxes for most Georgians.
“It caused me to have serious questions whether the data was going to do what we were told,” Ralston said. “I was not going to ask members of the House to vote on this as long as there were significant questions.” [full story]
On the other side of the ledger, Fox News reported today auditors had found wide-spread corruption in a government program designed to help poorer families reduce their heating costs through “weatherization”. This report is a surprise only to those who depend on the “mainstream media” for information. The Center For Individual Freedom reported last June that the program was a way to funnel cash to a select few. From the Fox story:
The program works like this: Washington sends weatherization money to the states, where it is passed to local nonprofits that hire contractors to spread insulation and install efficient heaters in people’s homes.
I don’t know about you, but I would REALLY like good investigative report on those nonprofits and their affiliations – in Delaware, Florida, Illinois, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Texas, Tennessee and Virginia. May I suggest to our readers that letters and emails to elected officials in those state, starting with the Attorneys General, might be in order. It might be really interesting reading.