Corey Boles and Janet Hook are reporting for Dow Jones Newswire,
Lawmakers are considering changing how the Consumer Price Index is calculated, a move that could save perhaps $220 billion and represent significant progress in the ongoing federal debt ceiling and deficit reduction talks.
Republicans and democrats are throwing everything on the table, but this is,
a rare proposal in that it would likely lead to both lower benefits paid to seniors and higher taxes paid by most people who pay federal income tax. As such, it could allow Republicans to argue they are tackling federal entitlement programs such as Social Security, and permit Democrats to say they are increasing taxes as part of any budget deal that is reached.
Meanwhile Jane Wells reports for CNBC that price increases are real, “look at the facts over the last year, bread up 8%, meat up 12%, milk up 15%, gas, 37%, coffee 40%. even women’s underwear index is up double digits.”
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“lower benefits to seniors” – smells like bigger lies in CPI.
Reminds me of a line from Tom Woods (tho he may not be the originator):
“There’s the stupid party and the evil party, and once in a while they get together and do something both stupid AND evil. They call that “bipartisanship”.
“There’s the stupid party and the evil party, and once in a while they get together and do something both stupid AND evil. They call that “bipartisanship”.
LMAO. Surprised this statement hasn’t become Internet folklore.
“Lawmakers are considering changing how the Consumer Price Index is calculated”
Next, they’ll be changing the way GDP is calculated.
Then, they’ll be changing the way unemployment is calculated.
(Wait a minute, they’ve already done that).
If S&P and Moody’s grew some cojones, they would downgrade the Treasury’s inflation indexed bonds.
And for good measure, let’s axe the statistics for M3, M2, and M1 while were at it… Say, didn’t we already chop M3 figures?
The US government really is entering its terminal phase. This is no different than the old Soviet politburo cooking the books. All the 20-something journo school grads at the NYT will swallow it hook and line because they just bought an iPad with plastic. Tom Friedman and Paul Krugman will grandly proclaim how cheap Lexuses and imported anchovies have gotten. The Dow will soar above 14,000. Banks will pay the Treasury for the privilege of giving it their depositors’ money. Heaven on earth…
Watching bureaucracy work is the best, most practical argument against large government and socialism. Forget the ideological arguments.
Rather than cleaning up the government’s sloppy accounting and virtually unmeasured programs, let’s cook the books even more!
Imagine the hundreds of millions of decisions which will be made using the wrong data. Imagine the structural inefficiency of it. Yes, this is part of the story of Greece and Russia and sometimes failing companies, who cook their books to obfuscate their failure. It actually hastens their decline.
And they don’t even have to use an obviously-suspect new method of calculation, merely one that most economists aren’t familiar with, or has aspects that are counter-intuitive. This way it’ll take years before they can properly interpret it, and thus easily misread things as being better than they are, their hopes projecting onto the aspects they aren’t familiar with yet.
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