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What kind of fun inflationary items? And please don't say gold or oil as it would be an extreme case of cherry picking commodities.
by Aloisius 15y ago
What kind of fun inflationary items? And please don't say gold or oil as it would be an extreme case of cherry picking commodities.
- shingen 15y agoThe Fed CPI excludes food and energy. So when milk goes from $1.50 to $3.60 per gallon over 20 years, they pretend that never happened. Or when gasoline goes from $0.75 to $3.59 over 30 years, they pretend that never happened. They pretend you don't need to eat food or drive anywhere.
- Aloisius 15y agoUh, the Fed CPI does include food and energy prices. The government does have a separate "core" inflation number which excludes food and energy prices, but the regular CPI number includes food and energy and has forever. Specifically, the CPI-U includes food & energy, but economic analysts and policymakers like to use the CPI-U for All Items Less Food and Energy because of the volatility of commodities. The CPI-U however is still available and was last sitting at 3% for 2011. Again, that's with food & energy. http://www.bls.gov/news.release/cpi.nr0.htm http://www.bls.gov/news.release/cpi.nr0.htm Not only that, but the numbers that exclude food and energy make inflation look higher than when they are included.