From where I am sitting, it seems a relatively narrow group of goods and services that have not gone up in price. I wish he had some examples from the broad group not experiencing inflation.So far, there is little evidence that inflation is rising beyond a “relatively narrow group of goods and services that have been directly affected by the pandemic and the reopening of the economy,” he said.
It's a highly gerrymandered metric. Basically you've got 80,000-odd "things" that you only ask urbanites and their shopkeepers about, and you do it by phone, and you literally call up Kroger 2175 and say "do you still have a 4.4 pound plastic bag of Golden Delicious apples for $6.99" and if they say "Golden Delicious are out of season" then you go back to your army of "experts" and say "what is the equivalent of a 4.4 pound plastic bag of Golden Delicious apples" for next time, not this time, because there is no equivalent for this month. As Oren Cass has pointed out, the Fed does not consider the price of cars to have inflated between 1975 and 2021 because cars are so much better now. The simple logic that the average price of a car has gone from $5k to $40k does not fit CPI modeling because there is no equivalent of a 1975 car on the market therefore no comparisons can be drawn.For each of the item categories, using scientific statistical procedures, the Bureau has chosen samples of several hundred specific items within selected business establishments frequented by consumers to represent the thousands of varieties available in the marketplace. For example, in a given supermarket, the Bureau may choose a plastic bag of golden delicious apples, U.S. extra fancy grade, weighing 4.4 pounds, to represent the apples category.
Pricing information is then sent to our national office, where specialists who have detailed knowledge about the particular goods or services review the data. These specialists check the data for accuracy and consistency, and make any necessary corrections or adjustments. Adjustments can range from an adjustment for a change in the size or quantity of a packaged item, to more complex adjustments based upon statistical analysis of the value of an item's features or quality. Thus, commodity specialists strive to prevent changes in the quality of items from affecting the CPI's measurement of price change.