"We randomly identified price changes of 10 everyday goods and services over two separate 10 year periods, and then compared those changes to the reported changes in the Consumer Price Index (CPI) over the same period. The 10 items, which we selected are: eggs, new cars, milk, gasoline, bread, rent of primary residence, coffee, dental services, potatoes, and electricity.
We know that people do not spend equal amounts on the above items, and we know their share of income devoted to them has changed over the decades. But as we are only interested in how these prices have changed relative to the CPI, those issues don't really matter. We chose to look at the period between 1970 and 1980 and then again between 2002 and 2012, because these time frames both had big deficits and loose monetary policy. But they straddle the time in which the most significant changes to inflation measurement methodology took effect. And while nominal price increases rose much faster in the 1970's, the degree to which the prices rose relative to the CPI was much, much higher more recently.
Between 1970 and 1980 the officially reported CPI rose a whopping 112%, and prices of our basket of goods and services rose by 121%, just 8% faster than the CPI. In contrast between 2002 and 2012 the CPI rose just 27.5%. But our basket rose by nearly double that rate - 52.1%! So the methods used in the 1970's to calculate CPI effectively captured the price changes of our goods, but only got half of those movements more recently. How convenient." - in The Global Investor Newsletter
Peter Schiff`s comments on the economy, stock markets, politics and gold. Schiff is the renowned writer of the bestseller Crash Proof: How to Profit from the Coming Economic Collapse.
