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Why can we not just use what the normal everyday expenses of the average household are?
  1. Housing. All costs. Homeless without it. Don't exclude it.
  2. Food. Starve without it. Groceries and restaurants.
  3. Health care. Total monthly cost of insurance, doctors and pharmaceuticals, both prescription and non prescription. Simpler in countries other than the US.
  4. Transportation. Vehicle ownership and operation costs.
  5. Personal services. From barbers & beauticians, to childcare, personal shoppers and chauffeurs.
  6. Entertainment.

This should be broken out by income deciles and tracked over time. Instead of excluding things that vary widely, such as housing costs, accommodate them. For each decile determine the proportion of households that own and rent, track the expenses for each and average the sums for each decile. Same with transportation. Break it down into automotive expenses, public transit expenses and other, track by decile and average.

We need some analysis as to what really is happening, rather than the cooked numbers prevalent in the USA.

"It is not necessary to have hope in order to persevere."

by ARGeezer (ARGeezer a in a circle eurotrib daught com) on Fri May 21st, 2010 at 11:38:45 PM EST
[ Parent ]
That's pretty much what the consumer price index is already supposed to do. Now, whether the consumer price index does what it is supposed to do is certainly debatable, but that's a slightly different kind of story.

The point here is that there may well be other interesting information in the price/quantity data than the consumer price index.

- Jake

Friends come and go. Enemies accumulate.

by JakeS (JangoSierra 'at' gmail 'dot' com) on Sat May 22nd, 2010 at 05:55:48 AM EST
[ Parent ]
The point here is that there may well be other interesting information in the price/quantity data than the consumer price index.

Yeah, the lower deciles are probably just too dumb to use available personal services such as chauffeurs and personal shopping assistants, foolishly forgo tax benefits from home ownership, spend most of their transportation budget on public transit, wasting all that time walking from home to the bus stop, etc.

"It is not necessary to have hope in order to persevere."
by ARGeezer (ARGeezer a in a circle eurotrib daught com) on Sat May 22nd, 2010 at 11:20:23 AM EST
[ Parent ]
Hey, I didn't say that the consumer price index isn't a useful measure.

But, just like GDP (which is also a useful measure) isn't the be-all-end-all measure of economic development, the CPI isn't the be-all-end-all of price indexing.

- Jake

Friends come and go. Enemies accumulate.

by JakeS (JangoSierra 'at' gmail 'dot' com) on Sat May 22nd, 2010 at 07:39:22 PM EST
[ Parent ]
My comment was not intended as criticism, but more as commiseration. When we deal with economics we enter the land of the retarded, or perhaps of the autistic. But I am not sure. Do the autistic tend to be religious? I have trouble so imagining.

Were we to classify disciplines by the intellectual approaches employed, economics does not belong in the social sciences. What science starts off with axiomatic assumptions that are presented as self evident and are beyond questioning? Example: "Inflation is everywhere and always a monetary phenomenon." Then consider a situation where simultaneously the creation of all money tokens is stopped and foodstuffs along with energy products become exceedingly scarce, such as after a nuclear exchange or the impact of a large asteroid. One can see that the price of food and energy will go up, but it is not because of the money. Nor can the problem be solved by applying any monetary manipulation that does not produce more food or energy. So obviously the axiom on which monetarists base their analysis is falsifiable. Economics, as currently practiced, should be in the religion departments.

 

"It is not necessary to have hope in order to persevere."

by ARGeezer (ARGeezer a in a circle eurotrib daught com) on Sat May 22nd, 2010 at 10:28:53 PM EST
[ Parent ]
What about stopping analysing "deciles" when the real inequality happens at the top centile ?

Un roi sans divertissement est un homme plein de misères
by linca (antonin POINT lucas AROBASE gmail.com) on Mon May 24th, 2010 at 09:39:41 AM EST
[ Parent ]
So cut the data into tranches of AAA+ reliable indicators through to Z- pump and dump stocks, then sell people the AAA+ indicator as a measure of the economy...
by njh on Tue May 25th, 2010 at 03:52:13 AM EST
[ Parent ]
Just follow the Dow...

By laying out pros and cons we risk inducing people to join the debate, and losing control of a process that only we fully understand. - Alan Greenspan
by Carrie (migeru at eurotrib dot com) on Tue May 25th, 2010 at 04:14:47 AM EST
[ Parent ]

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