this post was submitted on 10 Nov 2023
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Politics
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That's what's called gaming the statistics. Actual purchasing power has been declining at a significantly higher rate as wages increased the net result being you can buy less stuff for more money. Fluffy articles citing feel good statistics dont matter.
It's the standard statistics about wages and price levels that we've been using for decades. I don't see any evidence that they're gamed, though I don't doubt that there are some people for whom what you describe is true
CPI for example likely isn't being gamed, (I hope). There have been changes to the CPI so whoever made these does have the ability to push it into a certain direction. What I meant was, for a random fluff article I simply pick any of my favorite CPI categories and spin those to suit my main point.
Which is why Krugman is using CPI, and not some random category. He's smart enough to avoid that kind of pitfall.