4 ms·

Shadowstats is bullshit for a number of reasons - you can read up on most of them on the official articles and publications and justifications on the BLS websit

Shadowstats is bullshit for a number of reasons - you can read up on most of them on the official articles and publications and justifications on the BLS website -- which are generally written by statisticians with maths or econ PhDs with no vested political interest, unlike Shadowstats which is written by an MBA who needs to sell a newsletter. But you can very easily debunk Shadowstats by just averaging the ridiculous CPI inflation number postulated by the Shadowstats dude over 2/3/4 decades, and put that compounded rate of 8% into a calculator and multiply it with a wage from 1990 or 2000 or whenever... And see that consumer goods/services can't have increased by that much or otherwise everyone would be destitute...

hatware 4y ago
- somuchfordonor 4y ago
  - hatware 4y ago
    Notice that they attacked the source, rather than addressed the argument. Inflation is definitely higher than 7.7%. Seems to me there's a lot more energy going into that propaganda wave than anything else.
    - staticman2 4y ago
      I don't think learning about the world is about listening to whomever is best at arguing, exactly.
- kentm 4y ago
  That’s not confirmation bias in the slightest. It’s taking a claim and making observations and then noting that the observations don’t match the claims.
  - hatware 4y ago
    They started by attacking the source, I'm not sure why you're acting as if that isn't the case.
- mikeyouse 4y ago
  - hatware 4y ago
    > a grifter's imaginary numbers Can you address the argument without negatively framing the source of it?
    - mikeyouse 4y ago
      - hatware 4y ago
guerrilla 4y ago
> on the BLS website This is begging the question though. If the problem is BLS, then using BLS as a reference that BLS isn't the problem is blatantly fallacious. The claim is that BLS is deceiving us... so it doesn't make any sense to use them to adjudicate whether they're deceiving us or not. You see the problem right?
- mikeyouse 4y ago
  No. Because the BLS publishes their methodology, back tests it, and compares it to other weights and methodologies (which they publish full datasets for). You can then compare it to other independent measurements like the MIT Billion Prices Project and see that over an 8-year period, the BLS measurements differ from public pricing info by less than 1% which is less than 1/10th of a percent per year. http://www.thebillionpricesproject.com/datasets/ http://www.thebillionpricesproject.com/datasets/ There certainly is room for measurement error in something as complex as an inflation index that takes into account so many data points and weights, but the answer to resolve that complexity isn't "trust grifters selling newsletters to goldbugs".
  - guerrilla 4y ago
    Yes. They didn't refer to the MIT Billion Prices Project, they refereed to BLS itself, to debunk the claim that they "misused cover of academic theory" unlike what you did. You can't just say someone didn't fail epistemically just because you, 10 minutes later, didn't.
    - mikeyouse 4y ago
      Meh, this is just a different form of an ad hominem... There are literally hundreds of pages of documents written about CPI justification and process, and several documents specifically showing how Shadowstats is garbage (e.g. https://www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/2008/08/art1full.pdf https://www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/2008/08/art1full.pdf). Take quarrel with the actual research instead of the domain they're hosted on since as OP pointed out, many of them are published by third party academics with no financial or institutional connection to the BLS.
parkingrift 4y ago
8% YoY would indeed be a comical amount of inflation. I don't believe shadowstats is implying such an increase. The reason people don't believe the official CPI numbers is because the CPI numbers are not properly weighted for life or dollar impact. If we look from 1970 the price of health care has increased 54x, a new house has increased 19x, and annual tuition has increased 25x. If the price of milk increases 19x what do I care? I'll just stop buying milk. I don't want to stop being alive, I need a place to live, and I want and need an education. Even the numbers they do include seem gamed or fake. Shelter shows a 6.9% increase year over year, but the price of houses is up 17% over that same period and the price of rent is up 12-30%. I'm sure there is some ling winded explanation for how shelter excludes such and such thing, but it just loudly screams bullshit for many (most?) Americans. >And see that consumer goods/services can't have increased by that much or otherwise everyone would be destitute... I think people are pretty destitute to be honest.
- mrep 4y ago
  Look at the 1980 based graph [0]. They are definitely implying 7-5-10% inflation for the past 25 years. [0]: http://www.shadowstats.com/alternate_data/inflation-charts http://www.shadowstats.com/alternate_data/inflation-charts

hatware 4y ago

somuchfordonor 4y ago
- hatware 4y ago
  Notice that they attacked the source, rather than addressed the argument. Inflation is definitely higher than 7.7%. Seems to me there's a lot more energy going into that propaganda wave than anything else.
  - staticman2 4y ago
    I don't think learning about the world is about listening to whomever is best at arguing, exactly.
kentm 4y ago
That’s not confirmation bias in the slightest. It’s taking a claim and making observations and then noting that the observations don’t match the claims.
- hatware 4y ago
  They started by attacking the source, I'm not sure why you're acting as if that isn't the case.
mikeyouse 4y ago
- hatware 4y ago
  > a grifter's imaginary numbers Can you address the argument without negatively framing the source of it?
  - mikeyouse 4y ago
    - hatware 4y ago

guerrilla 4y ago

> on the BLS website This is begging the question though. If the problem is BLS, then using BLS as a reference that BLS isn't the problem is blatantly fallacious. The claim is that BLS is deceiving us... so it doesn't make any sense to use them to adjudicate whether they're deceiving us or not. You see the problem right?

mikeyouse 4y ago
No. Because the BLS publishes their methodology, back tests it, and compares it to other weights and methodologies (which they publish full datasets for). You can then compare it to other independent measurements like the MIT Billion Prices Project and see that over an 8-year period, the BLS measurements differ from public pricing info by less than 1% which is less than 1/10th of a percent per year. http://www.thebillionpricesproject.com/datasets/ http://www.thebillionpricesproject.com/datasets/ There certainly is room for measurement error in something as complex as an inflation index that takes into account so many data points and weights, but the answer to resolve that complexity isn't "trust grifters selling newsletters to goldbugs".
- guerrilla 4y ago
  Yes. They didn't refer to the MIT Billion Prices Project, they refereed to BLS itself, to debunk the claim that they "misused cover of academic theory" unlike what you did. You can't just say someone didn't fail epistemically just because you, 10 minutes later, didn't.
  - mikeyouse 4y ago
    Meh, this is just a different form of an ad hominem... There are literally hundreds of pages of documents written about CPI justification and process, and several documents specifically showing how Shadowstats is garbage (e.g. https://www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/2008/08/art1full.pdf https://www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/2008/08/art1full.pdf). Take quarrel with the actual research instead of the domain they're hosted on since as OP pointed out, many of them are published by third party academics with no financial or institutional connection to the BLS.

parkingrift 4y ago

8% YoY would indeed be a comical amount of inflation. I don't believe shadowstats is implying such an increase. The reason people don't believe the official CPI numbers is because the CPI numbers are not properly weighted for life or dollar impact. If we look from 1970 the price of health care has increased 54x, a new house has increased 19x, and annual tuition has increased 25x. If the price of milk increases 19x what do I care? I'll just stop buying milk. I don't want to stop being alive, I need a place to live, and I want and need an education. Even the numbers they do include seem gamed or fake. Shelter shows a 6.9% increase year over year, but the price of houses is up 17% over that same period and the price of rent is up 12-30%. I'm sure there is some ling winded explanation for how shelter excludes such and such thing, but it just loudly screams bullshit for many (most?) Americans. >And see that consumer goods/services can't have increased by that much or otherwise everyone would be destitute... I think people are pretty destitute to be honest.

mrep 4y ago
Look at the 1980 based graph [0]. They are definitely implying 7-5-10% inflation for the past 25 years. [0]: http://www.shadowstats.com/alternate_data/inflation-charts http://www.shadowstats.com/alternate_data/inflation-charts