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The most successful scams actually do go into excruciating detail to appear methodical, that's how you get people to buy in. While I do agree with many of the

The most successful scams actually do go into excruciating detail to appear methodical, that's how you get people to buy in. While I do agree with many of the points you raised, for me those point to the uselessness of the CPI as a matric. If the dataset is so complex you can only boil it down so far before too much context is lost. The CPI is an attempt to create a single number of off the entire economy, a task that is impossible made only more clear by complaints over the obvious and egregious tradeoffs made. Statistics can be useful, it can also be a pointless game of manipulating so much data that you can make it say whatever you want. I think you'd be hard pressed to find an average American that would feel like prices have only gone up by ~4-5% over the last few years.

JumpCrisscross 3y ago
> those point to the uselessness of the CPI as a matric Unless you're setting federal policy, it probably is useless to you. For personal forecasting, you're better off using the CPI calculated for your state or metropolitan area. (If you're procuring at a national scale, you're looking at a producer index.)
- flagrant_taco 3y ago
  CPI plays a huge role in our everyday lives though. From cost of living raises to entitlement programs, it all moves based on inflation numbers and the CPI. The Fed even considers these numbers when watching the economy and deciding on fiscal policy, setting the Fed Funds Rate and impacting interest rates across the board.