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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
by 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 agoYes. 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 agoMeh, 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.