Big Mac inflation index is better than CPI

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Correct. Look at the work of John Williams at shadowstats.com. He runs the inflation numbers using the government’s own methodology that was used pre-1980. This shows that in 2022, inflation actually peaked at around 17%, not 9% as we’ve been told.

Following the massive inflation of the 1970s, the government statisticians got together and determined that, “You know what? It turns out we’ve been calculating inflation all wrong and that the true numbers are actually lower! Isn’t that great news?!” Among the changes they have made since then are that home prices are no longer used in calculating the CPI. Now they use a nonsense metric called “owner’s equivalent rent,” which is basically just a survey question where they call random homeowners and ask how much they think they could rent their house for if they decided to do so. This was ostensibly done to remove the investment component of housing and focus only on the shelter cost, but the true reason was to be able to manipulate the numbers — imagine in the modern, data-driven world collecting information in this manner.

So, yes, basically just double the CPI and that will give you a more accurate assessment of the true inflation rate. And if you are shocked that the government would behave in this manner, wait until you hear about what’s going on in today’s “booming job market.”

This is an obviously economically sound reason. The investment value of real estate is investment, not consumption. Imagine in the modern, data-driven world *not* collecting data in this manner.

I’m the PP. Of course the concept of separating investment from shelter cost is valid, but their methodology is deliberately flawed — you’re telling me there’s no better way to determine the change in shelter cost than the nonsense process I described above? Use the change in rents instead of home prices then. Or any other number of ways that this could be done.

Even before the rise of the tech behemoths, twenty years ago, Walmart used to order extra strawberry Pop Tarts in advance of snowstorms because their data showed that people gravitated especially to that flavor during very cold weather. But the government can’t figure out a better way to determine the change in shelter cost than asking homeowners - who don’t rent out their house and may not have been in the rental market for decades - how much they think they could charge to rent out their house? Yeah, sure. They do that because it’s a closed data source that can’t be checked and gives them lots of potentially erroneous information that they can use to manipulate the numbers as they see fit.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Correct. Look at the work of John Williams at shadowstats.com. He runs the inflation numbers using the government’s own methodology that was used pre-1980. This shows that in 2022, inflation actually peaked at around 17%, not 9% as we’ve been told.

Following the massive inflation of the 1970s, the government statisticians got together and determined that, “You know what? It turns out we’ve been calculating inflation all wrong and that the true numbers are actually lower! Isn’t that great news?!” Among the changes they have made since then are that home prices are no longer used in calculating the CPI. Now they use a nonsense metric called “owner’s equivalent rent,” which is basically just a survey question where they call random homeowners and ask how much they think they could rent their house for if they decided to do so. This was ostensibly done to remove the investment component of housing and focus only on the shelter cost, but the true reason was to be able to manipulate the numbers — imagine in the modern, data-driven world collecting information in this manner.

So, yes, basically just double the CPI and that will give you a more accurate assessment of the true inflation rate. And if you are shocked that the government would behave in this manner, wait until you hear about what’s going on in today’s “booming job market.”

This is an obviously economically sound reason. The investment value of real estate is investment, not consumption. Imagine in the modern, data-driven world *not* collecting data in this manner.

I’m the PP. Of course the concept of separating investment from shelter cost is valid, but their methodology is deliberately flawed — you’re telling me there’s no better way to determine the change in shelter cost than the nonsense process I described above? Use the change in rents instead of home prices then. Or any other number of ways that this could be done.

Even before the rise of the tech behemoths, twenty years ago, Walmart used to order extra strawberry Pop Tarts in advance of snowstorms because their data showed that people gravitated especially to that flavor during very cold weather. But the government can’t figure out a better way to determine the change in shelter cost than asking homeowners - who don’t rent out their house and may not have been in the rental market for decades - how much they think they could charge to rent out their house? Yeah, sure. They do that because it’s a closed data source that can’t be checked and gives them lots of potentially erroneous information that they can use to manipulate the numbers as they see fit.

It's so funny to me when people who have such limited information or understanding default to assuming nefarious intent or incompetence. I don't know anyone at BLS or CBO or the other agencies that gather and track this data. But I know a few people who do similar economic research. The idea that they "manipulate numbers as they see fit" or "can't figure out a better way" is assuming such bad faith that it astounds me. I know that these people are incredibly intelligent and diligent, and that all of them (except for maybe like 0.1%) would find fudging or obfuscating data to be anathema to everything they have worked for their entire lives.

The idea that these people who have trained and worked for 20+ years in the field are ignoring some super obvious thing that you, of course, know immediately, is so funny. Imagine me reading a short article about your work, and then walking in to your office and saying "you are such an idiot, doing X and Y this way! Only a fool would do it like that!". I'll bet these people have spent years trying to.improve and tweak the data and data collection to make it more accurate and robust. Of course they aren't perfect, they are human. And certainly at times organizational and political realities play a hand in holding back good work, I am sure.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Computers, nearly all electronics, airfares, telephone calls (remember those used to cost something), clothes….those are just some of the items off the top of my head that have increased less than inflation or actually cost nominally less today vs 2004.

These price cuts are due to technology/productivity improvements (in real labor/energy/resource inputs) or quality reduction.

Monerary inflation means paying more for the same stuff, not paying more for new more efficient stuff.

Claiming that human progress is "deflation" that offsets monetary inflation is a lie that economists to enable the pillaging of humanity by the people who control the system.

Inflation is an increase in money not accompanied by an increase in real trade, when that new money is flowing to corners of the economy instead of all laborers, that's theft.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Correct. Look at the work of John Williams at shadowstats.com. He runs the inflation numbers using the government’s own methodology that was used pre-1980. This shows that in 2022, inflation actually peaked at around 17%, not 9% as we’ve been told.

Following the massive inflation of the 1970s, the government statisticians got together and determined that, “You know what? It turns out we’ve been calculating inflation all wrong and that the true numbers are actually lower! Isn’t that great news?!” Among the changes they have made since then are that home prices are no longer used in calculating the CPI. Now they use a nonsense metric called “owner’s equivalent rent,” which is basically just a survey question where they call random homeowners and ask how much they think they could rent their house for if they decided to do so. This was ostensibly done to remove the investment component of housing and focus only on the shelter cost, but the true reason was to be able to manipulate the numbers — imagine in the modern, data-driven world collecting information in this manner.

So, yes, basically just double the CPI and that will give you a more accurate assessment of the true inflation rate. And if you are shocked that the government would behave in this manner, wait until you hear about what’s going on in today’s “booming job market.”

This is an obviously economically sound reason. The investment value of real estate is investment, not consumption. Imagine in the modern, data-driven world *not* collecting data in this manner.

I’m the PP. Of course the concept of separating investment from shelter cost is valid, but their methodology is deliberately flawed — you’re telling me there’s no better way to determine the change in shelter cost than the nonsense process I described above? Use the change in rents instead of home prices then. Or any other number of ways that this could be done.

Even before the rise of the tech behemoths, twenty years ago, Walmart used to order extra strawberry Pop Tarts in advance of snowstorms because their data showed that people gravitated especially to that flavor during very cold weather. But the government can’t figure out a better way to determine the change in shelter cost than asking homeowners - who don’t rent out their house and may not have been in the rental market for decades - how much they think they could charge to rent out their house? Yeah, sure. They do that because it’s a closed data source that can’t be checked and gives them lots of potentially erroneous information that they can use to manipulate the numbers as they see fit.

It's so funny to me when people who have such limited information or understanding default to assuming nefarious intent or incompetence. I don't know anyone at BLS or CBO or the other agencies that gather and track this data. But I know a few people who do similar economic research. The idea that they "manipulate numbers as they see fit" or "can't figure out a better way" is assuming such bad faith that it astounds me. I know that these people are incredibly intelligent and diligent, and that all of them (except for maybe like 0.1%) would find fudging or obfuscating data to be anathema to everything they have worked for their entire lives.

The idea that these people who have trained and worked for 20+ years in the field are ignoring some super obvious thing that you, of course, know immediately, is so funny. Imagine me reading a short article about your work, and then walking in to your office and saying "you are such an idiot, doing X and Y this way! Only a fool would do it like that!". I'll bet these people have spent years trying to.improve and tweak the data and data collection to make it more accurate and robust. Of course they aren't perfect, they are human. And certainly at times organizational and political realities play a hand in holding back good work, I am sure.

It's a systemic failure or incentives.
Underreporting official inflation is always in favor of the short term benefit of the current President, who leads the BLS, so there is never an incentive to correct downward mistakes, only upward mistakes

[Anonymous]

Owners equivalent rent is the cost of housing. That is literally what it means.
If your choose to pay more than housing costs to buy a house containing invisible beanie babies, instead of renting, and then get that money back when you sell, that's not inflation. You didn't lose any money. When you pay rent that money is gone, no matter how much future rent costs.

You can quibble with how equivalent rent is calculated, but not the concept itself.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Correct. Look at the work of John Williams at shadowstats.com. He runs the inflation numbers using the government’s own methodology that was used pre-1980. This shows that in 2022, inflation actually peaked at around 17%, not 9% as we’ve been told.

Following the massive inflation of the 1970s, the government statisticians got together and determined that, “You know what? It turns out we’ve been calculating inflation all wrong and that the true numbers are actually lower! Isn’t that great news?!” Among the changes they have made since then are that home prices are no longer used in calculating the CPI. Now they use a nonsense metric called “owner’s equivalent rent,” which is basically just a survey question where they call random homeowners and ask how much they think they could rent their house for if they decided to do so. This was ostensibly done to remove the investment component of housing and focus only on the shelter cost, but the true reason was to be able to manipulate the numbers — imagine in the modern, data-driven world collecting information in this manner.

So, yes, basically just double the CPI and that will give you a more accurate assessment of the true inflation rate. And if you are shocked that the government would behave in this manner, wait until you hear about what’s going on in today’s “booming job market.”

This is an obviously economically sound reason. The investment value of real estate is investment, not consumption. Imagine in the modern, data-driven world *not* collecting data in this manner.

I’m the PP. Of course the concept of separating investment from shelter cost is valid, but their methodology is deliberately flawed — you’re telling me there’s no better way to determine the change in shelter cost than the nonsense process I described above? Use the change in rents instead of home prices then. Or any other number of ways that this could be done.

Even before the rise of the tech behemoths, twenty years ago, Walmart used to order extra strawberry Pop Tarts in advance of snowstorms because their data showed that people gravitated especially to that flavor during very cold weather. But the government can’t figure out a better way to determine the change in shelter cost than asking homeowners - who don’t rent out their house and may not have been in the rental market for decades - how much they think they could charge to rent out their house? Yeah, sure. They do that because it’s a closed data source that can’t be checked and gives them lots of potentially erroneous information that they can use to manipulate the numbers as they see fit.

It's so funny to me when people who have such limited information or understanding default to assuming nefarious intent or incompetence. I don't know anyone at BLS or CBO or the other agencies that gather and track this data. But I know a few people who do similar economic research. The idea that they "manipulate numbers as they see fit" or "can't figure out a better way" is assuming such bad faith that it astounds me. I know that these people are incredibly intelligent and diligent, and that all of them (except for maybe like 0.1%) would find fudging or obfuscating data to be anathema to everything they have worked for their entire lives.

The idea that these people who have trained and worked for 20+ years in the field are ignoring some super obvious thing that you, of course, know immediately, is so funny. Imagine me reading a short article about your work, and then walking in to your office and saying "you are such an idiot, doing X and Y this way! Only a fool would do it like that!". I'll bet these people have spent years trying to.improve and tweak the data and data collection to make it more accurate and robust. Of course they aren't perfect, they are human. And certainly at times organizational and political realities play a hand in holding back good work, I am sure.

+1
Not to mention that they need to keep a standard of comparison in order to study trends over time. So any innovations in data collection/representation need to be balanced with the value of keeping a comparable history of data. A lot of work goes into making slow shifts so that the measure is valid in contemporary reality but can also be integrated with historical data. That's why there are a LOT of varied measures that they take into account--some keep more to a historical standard, some are more responsive to current situation/data.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Computers, nearly all electronics, airfares, telephone calls (remember those used to cost something), clothes….those are just some of the items off the top of my head that have increased less than inflation or actually cost nominally less today vs 2004.

These price cuts are due to technology/productivity improvements (in real labor/energy/resource inputs) or quality reduction.

Monerary inflation means paying more for the same stuff, not paying more for new more efficient stuff.

Claiming that human progress is "deflation" that offsets monetary inflation is a lie that economists to enable the pillaging of humanity by the people who control the system.

Inflation is an increase in money not accompanied by an increase in real trade, when that new money is flowing to corners of the economy instead of all laborers, that's theft.

Prone to outrage I guess? The previous comment was as nothing ever decreases in price which is not true.

That said, you do realize a deflationary world is much, much worse than an inflationary world…right? It’s just you want inflation at 2% annually not 10%…but you definitely don’t want -10% general deflation which basically happens in depressions.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Correct. Look at the work of John Williams at shadowstats.com. He runs the inflation numbers using the government’s own methodology that was used pre-1980. This shows that in 2022, inflation actually peaked at around 17%, not 9% as we’ve been told.

Following the massive inflation of the 1970s, the government statisticians got together and determined that, “You know what? It turns out we’ve been calculating inflation all wrong and that the true numbers are actually lower! Isn’t that great news?!” Among the changes they have made since then are that home prices are no longer used in calculating the CPI. Now they use a nonsense metric called “owner’s equivalent rent,” which is basically just a survey question where they call random homeowners and ask how much they think they could rent their house for if they decided to do so. This was ostensibly done to remove the investment component of housing and focus only on the shelter cost, but the true reason was to be able to manipulate the numbers — imagine in the modern, data-driven world collecting information in this manner.

So, yes, basically just double the CPI and that will give you a more accurate assessment of the true inflation rate. And if you are shocked that the government would behave in this manner, wait until you hear about what’s going on in today’s “booming job market.”

This is an obviously economically sound reason. The investment value of real estate is investment, not consumption. Imagine in the modern, data-driven world *not* collecting data in this manner.

I’m the PP. Of course the concept of separating investment from shelter cost is valid, but their methodology is deliberately flawed — you’re telling me there’s no better way to determine the change in shelter cost than the nonsense process I described above? Use the change in rents instead of home prices then. Or any other number of ways that this could be done.

Even before the rise of the tech behemoths, twenty years ago, Walmart used to order extra strawberry Pop Tarts in advance of snowstorms because their data showed that people gravitated especially to that flavor during very cold weather. But the government can’t figure out a better way to determine the change in shelter cost than asking homeowners - who don’t rent out their house and may not have been in the rental market for decades - how much they think they could charge to rent out their house? Yeah, sure. They do that because it’s a closed data source that can’t be checked and gives them lots of potentially erroneous information that they can use to manipulate the numbers as they see fit.

It's so funny to me when people who have such limited information or understanding default to assuming nefarious intent or incompetence. I don't know anyone at BLS or CBO or the other agencies that gather and track this data. But I know a few people who do similar economic research. The idea that they "manipulate numbers as they see fit" or "can't figure out a better way" is assuming such bad faith that it astounds me. I know that these people are incredibly intelligent and diligent, and that all of them (except for maybe like 0.1%) would find fudging or obfuscating data to be anathema to everything they have worked for their entire lives.

The idea that these people who have trained and worked for 20+ years in the field are ignoring some super obvious thing that you, of course, know immediately, is so funny. Imagine me reading a short article about your work, and then walking in to your office and saying "you are such an idiot, doing X and Y this way! Only a fool would do it like that!". I'll bet these people have spent years trying to.improve and tweak the data and data collection to make it more accurate and robust. Of course they aren't perfect, they are human. And certainly at times organizational and political realities play a hand in holding back good work, I am sure.

#agedlikemilk

https://www.bnnbloomberg.ca/jpmorgan-blackrock-among-bls-economist-s-cpi-super-users-1.2056985

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Correct. Look at the work of John Williams at shadowstats.com. He runs the inflation numbers using the government’s own methodology that was used pre-1980. This shows that in 2022, inflation actually peaked at around 17%, not 9% as we’ve been told.

Following the massive inflation of the 1970s, the government statisticians got together and determined that, “You know what? It turns out we’ve been calculating inflation all wrong and that the true numbers are actually lower! Isn’t that great news?!” Among the changes they have made since then are that home prices are no longer used in calculating the CPI. Now they use a nonsense metric called “owner’s equivalent rent,” which is basically just a survey question where they call random homeowners and ask how much they think they could rent their house for if they decided to do so. This was ostensibly done to remove the investment component of housing and focus only on the shelter cost, but the true reason was to be able to manipulate the numbers — imagine in the modern, data-driven world collecting information in this manner.

So, yes, basically just double the CPI and that will give you a more accurate assessment of the true inflation rate. And if you are shocked that the government would behave in this manner, wait until you hear about what’s going on in today’s “booming job market.”

This is an obviously economically sound reason. The investment value of real estate is investment, not consumption. Imagine in the modern, data-driven world *not* collecting data in this manner.

I’m the PP. Of course the concept of separating investment from shelter cost is valid, but their methodology is deliberately flawed — you’re telling me there’s no better way to determine the change in shelter cost than the nonsense process I described above? Use the change in rents instead of home prices then. Or any other number of ways that this could be done.

Even before the rise of the tech behemoths, twenty years ago, Walmart used to order extra strawberry Pop Tarts in advance of snowstorms because their data showed that people gravitated especially to that flavor during very cold weather. But the government can’t figure out a better way to determine the change in shelter cost than asking homeowners - who don’t rent out their house and may not have been in the rental market for decades - how much they think they could charge to rent out their house? Yeah, sure. They do that because it’s a closed data source that can’t be checked and gives them lots of potentially erroneous information that they can use to manipulate the numbers as they see fit.

It's so funny to me when people who have such limited information or understanding default to assuming nefarious intent or incompetence. I don't know anyone at BLS or CBO or the other agencies that gather and track this data. But I know a few people who do similar economic research. The idea that they "manipulate numbers as they see fit" or "can't figure out a better way" is assuming such bad faith that it astounds me. I know that these people are incredibly intelligent and diligent, and that all of them (except for maybe like 0.1%) would find fudging or obfuscating data to be anathema to everything they have worked for their entire lives.

The idea that these people who have trained and worked for 20+ years in the field are ignoring some super obvious thing that you, of course, know immediately, is so funny. Imagine me reading a short article about your work, and then walking in to your office and saying "you are such an idiot, doing X and Y this way! Only a fool would do it like that!". I'll bet these people have spent years trying to.improve and tweak the data and data collection to make it more accurate and robust. Of course they aren't perfect, they are human. And certainly at times organizational and political realities play a hand in holding back good work, I am sure.

#agedlikemilk

https://www.bnnbloomberg.ca/jpmorgan-blackrock-among-bls-economist-s-cpi-super-users-1.2056985

"the issues appear to be isolated to this one staffer"

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Almost everything we actually buy has significantly outstripped inflation.

Education
Housing
Food (grocery and eating out)
Cars, Transportation, Hotels

It’s ALL gone up way faster than official CPI numbers. CPI is junk. The only things I can think of that haven’t outstripped inflation over the past 20 yrs are computers and gasoline maybe.

I make 300k now and according to CPI it should be equal to a ~186k salary in 2004. A more accurate figure imo is to look at Big Mac prices, back then a Big Mac was $2.39, and according to the McDonald’s app I can buy one for $5.59 today.

This means my $300k income is actually $126k in 2004 Big Mac dollars. This is definitely how things feel, low 100k’s back then was the benchmark for being comfortable and now it’s more like 300. 1M you could start thinking about retiring back then but now you need ~3M.

If you use the deals on the app, you can usually buy one get one free with the Big Mac. It's kind of hard to compare apples and oragnes...

CPI is a lie.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Almost everything we actually buy has significantly outstripped inflation.

Education
Housing
Food (grocery and eating out)
Cars, Transportation, Hotels

It’s ALL gone up way faster than official CPI numbers. CPI is junk. The only things I can think of that haven’t outstripped inflation over the past 20 yrs are computers and gasoline maybe.

I make 300k now and according to CPI it should be equal to a ~186k salary in 2004. A more accurate figure imo is to look at Big Mac prices, back then a Big Mac was $2.39, and according to the McDonald’s app I can buy one for $5.59 today.

This means my $300k income is actually $126k in 2004 Big Mac dollars. This is definitely how things feel, low 100k’s back then was the benchmark for being comfortable and now it’s more like 300. 1M you could start thinking about retiring back then but now you need ~3M.

CPI is a lie.

If you use the app, you can buy one get one free with a Big Mac usually, so there's that.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Almost everything we actually buy has significantly outstripped inflation.

Education
Housing
Food (grocery and eating out)
Cars, Transportation, Hotels

It’s ALL gone up way faster than official CPI numbers. CPI is junk. The only things I can think of that haven’t outstripped inflation over the past 20 yrs are computers and gasoline maybe.

I make 300k now and according to CPI it should be equal to a ~186k salary in 2004. A more accurate figure imo is to look at Big Mac prices, back then a Big Mac was $2.39, and according to the McDonald’s app I can buy one for $5.59 today.

This means my $300k income is actually $126k in 2004 Big Mac dollars. This is definitely how things feel, low 100k’s back then was the benchmark for being comfortable and now it’s more like 300. 1M you could start thinking about retiring back then but now you need ~3M.

CPI is a lie.

I think the issue may be that inflation in dc has outpaced national inflation. We were driving through rural west Pennsylvania recently and stopped at a McDonalds and the food was noticeably cheaper.

Yeah, I was in Colorado and the Mcdonalds app had $1 breakfast sandwiches. In DC, it's buy one and then get the second for $1.

[Anonymous]

Stop crying OP, go make more money if your voodoo economist tells you inflation is higher than you like.

[Anonymous]

While normally trust anything I read on a site called "Shadowstats.com", this figure does not appear to be accurate. There have been more credible estimates of the effects of this change in methodology regarding house prices:
"Another estimate — using calculations used in a paper for The Quarterly Journal of Economics and updated for the newsletter Full Stack Economics — found that including home prices and interest rates instead of rent would have pushed the inflation rate to 11.5 percent in February, the latest date available, up 3.6 percentage points from the official figure that month."
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/05/24/technology/inflation-measure-cpi-accuracy.html

So while changes in how CPI has been computed over time do matter, it's not a good idea to "just double it". It's not ideal that the methodology changes over time, but typically the changes are for the better (like accounting for consumer substiution, and seller discounts). You can disagree with some aspects, but the official measures are certainly more accurate than cherry-picked metrics like the price of hamburgers or houses in DC.

Anonymous wrote:Correct. Look at the work of John Williams at shadowstats.com. He runs the inflation numbers using the government’s own methodology that was used pre-1980. This shows that in 2022, inflation actually peaked at around 17%, not 9% as we’ve been told.

Following the massive inflation of the 1970s, the government statisticians got together and determined that, “You know what? It turns out we’ve been calculating inflation all wrong and that the true numbers are actually lower! Isn’t that great news?!” Among the changes they have made since then are that home prices are no longer used in calculating the CPI. Now they use a nonsense metric called “owner’s equivalent rent,” which is basically just a survey question where they call random homeowners and ask how much they think they could rent their house for if they decided to do so. This was ostensibly done to remove the investment component of housing and focus only on the shelter cost, but the true reason was to be able to manipulate the numbers — imagine in the modern, data-driven world collecting information in this manner.

So, yes, basically just double the CPI and that will give you a more accurate assessment of the true inflation rate. And if you are shocked that the government would behave in this manner, wait until you hear about what’s going on in today’s “booming job market.”

[Anonymous]

The Economist came up with the Big Mac index years ago. It's worth looking at their annual report on the index.