The San Francisco Fed recently stated that inflation (which they define as a rise in prices) is probably lower than it is reported in the US. It makes you wonder whether anyone at the Fed has ever bought a house, rented an apartment, bought food or clothing, etc. The problem with looking at a “price level” that attempts to aggregate and average prices across society is that that aggregate is not an accurate indicator of the cost of living for most people, and perhaps not for anyone. It is the work of of statisticians who have created their “model” price level which bears absolutely no relation to the actual prices paid by any person who actually exists.
There are major problems with the computation of the price level. Each contributing factor – food, energy, housing, etc. – receives a particular weighting. The government will always play with those weightings to try to minimize the official inflation rate so as to hide the true effects and extent of the Fed’s loose monetary policy. This is why the consumer price index (CPI) formula was changed years ago to produce a lower inflation figure. Then “hedonic adjustments” are made to disguise the fall in the standard of living when consumers are forced to switch, for instance, from buying steak to buying ground beef due to rising prices. Then the focus switches on lower-numbered aggregates, as when the focus went from CPI to “core” CPI, which excluded food and energy prices. Now CPI is ignored, with the attention being on PCE (personal consumption expenditure.) What measure will be used next? Who knows, but it is almost guaranteed to be one which understates price rises even more.
The Fed loves to have inflation figures that are understated. They can duck the blame for rising prices by pointing out that the price level aggregates are increasing very slowly. So when consumers complain that beef prices are going through the roof, or that their rent was raised another 10% this year, the Fed can hide behind its models. “Inflation is less than 2 percent. Inflation is less than 2 percent. Inflation is less than 2 percent.” Statistics don’t lie, right? So the Fed can just ignore price rises in the real world and try to deflect responsibility. And by saying that inflation is still low, the Fed has all the excuses in the world (at least in its own mind) to continue its unprecedentedly loose monetary policy.
The federal government also loves to have low inflation figures because they know that actual price inflation is higher, so they can benefit by spending newly created dollars before prices rise, while then having to adjust Social Security and other welfare payments by less than the actual rate of price inflation.
Of course, the idea that the billions of transactions that take place every day could somehow be reflected in one figure, the price level, has a bit of the absurdity ofGoskomtsen about it. Just like the Soviet and Warsaw Pact central planners often looked to Western catalogs to try to set their prices, the Fed’s economists must necessarily look to similar shortcuts in calculating their price levels. There is no way to aggregate all the consumer transactions that take place every day, make necessary adjustments for qualitative differences, and crunch the numbers to come up with an overall consumer price index. Price indices therefore are fatally flawed from the outset, and the trust placed in those figures is naive, foolish, and arrogant. Regardless of what the Fed may say, the Fed and the federal government benefit from continued reliance on government-created price level and inflation figures, while ordinary Americans continue to suffer from rising prices and a reduced standard of living.
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