Lowering Standard of Living by Design · Dec 28, 04:48 PM
Distortions in the way inflation is calculated contributed to today’s financial mess and the 2000-02 tech crash. Unless the problem is fixed, you can count on another crisis ahead.
So says Jim Jubak. It’s all about the CPI, or Consumer Price Index and some “statistical flimflam” used by the Bureau of Labor Statistics to make inflation smaller than it really is by using “Hedonic quality adjustments” to measure changes in the value of the product over time. So, a car today might cost three times what a typical car cost in the ’60s, but it’s safer, more fuel efficient, and it generally goes where you steer it—so it has more value than a ’60s car. In the end, the government argues, a car today doesn’t really cost three times as much because its value is more. So there’s little inflation and they don’t need to raise interest rates or make bigger Social Security payments.
Of course, how much value is it to people to have a safe car if they don’t crash it? How much does extra engine efficiency add to value? Yes, people buy those idiotic SUVs because some moron is shown tearing up a desert going 130 miles per hour over the rocky and dusty roads, yet when these consumers cross that little dip in the road in front of their driveways they always slow down to less then a half mile per goddam hour because they are quaking in their boots worrying that their poorly made “car” will fall to bits if they go any faster over that quarter inch dip. So where’s all that extra “value” that they show in the tee vee? Value is subjective, you see.
The problem doesn’t end there, of course.
In the 1990s, the government also started to include substitution pricing in its inflation measure. In this adjustment, government statisticians assumed that if the price of something went up, people would use less and would substitute a less costly product or service. So when steak went up in price, consumers might buy more pork or chicken.
Yippee! There’s no inflation because we’re all eating a monomolecular coating of peanut butter on Wonder Bread instead of real food! Gosh, isn’t that sweet!
So where do we go from here?
Anyway, read the article. It’ll make you spit up a gizzard, or whatever steak substitute you’ve been gnawing on.
Fake inflation numbers masked crisis
— Guido Veloce
It's Garter Belt and Nylons Time · Dec 2, 01:34 PM
Via Wandering France comes word of the new Vogue calendar. What’s in vogue these days? Sex kittens in underwear from the last depression. See Sexy Pinups Cover 2009 Vogue Paris Calendar
— Guido Veloce
Sweet Lord - Unholy Chocolate · Nov 26, 12:40 PM
You may try to take the title of this blog to be a mild invective or worse. But it’s not. It’s the name of a chocolate concoction that has the German church up in arms because it’s named what it’s named. It’s Jesus in chocolate. Of course, it’s not like the candy guys were working from a photograph or anything.
“Take and eat, for this is my body” was evidently never meant for chocolatiers who wished to “reintroduce traditional religious values into this commercial world.”
Coming from a place in which the visage of Jesus formed by the burned areas on a piece of French Toast is seen as a religious miracle and reason to pile the family into the old SUV for a holy pilgrimage, I just don’t get this.
I mean, how can something that’s commonly done in marble be immoral if you use chocolate?
We live in a strange world—oh sweet Lord.
— Guido Veloce
Our Politicians are Dumber Than Normal People · Nov 21, 01:42 PM
If you have the distinct disadvantage of living in the US, you now can rest happily with the knowledge that all those people who’ve voted for years and years have managed to put in place a government almost entirely ignorant of basic civic knowledge. Yes, if you’ve voted for some ignoramus because he or she seems like a normal dude or dudette, well, you’ve gotten your wish.
Here’s a headline so long and convoluted your congressperson probably can’t parse it: US elected officials scored abysmally on a test measuring their civic knowledge, with an average grade of just 44 percent, the group that organized the exam said Thursday
— Guido Veloce
Palin the Barbarian · Nov 7, 09:36 PM
Why are conservatives attracted to idiots like flies to a steaming turd? I don’t get this.
According to “Conservative icon and author Richard Viguerie”, the woman who didn’t know Africa was a continent, “became a hero … and a rising star in this campaign,” a status he said is likely to continue as conservatives aim to reshape and remarket their brand in the wake of the 2008 election landslide for Barack Obama.
Taxpayers won’t even be able to afford her clothes, why would they trust her with the budget?
Palin gone, anything but forgotten
— Guido Veloce
