How Government Statistics Mislead

Published: May 8, 2008, 2:09 pm

I know...the faithful readers were wondering "where is our morning blog?" Well, it is the afternoon but your busy dude here has been...well, busy--panel in the morning and, then, there was lunch...but I digress... Yesterday, there was a fascinating column in The New York Times--fascinating in showing out truly out of touch the columnist is. David Leonhardt, a Times' economic columnist, had a piece that basically said to you'all: you don't know how good you have it when it comes to inflation. His basic argument was this:There is also something particular to inflation that aggravates loss aversion. Price increases are obvious. But price declines are often hidden. The cost of an item stays about the same for years, while everything else gets more expensive and nominal incomes rise. When you dig into the Consumer Price Index, you start to realize just how many things fall into this category. The price of major appliances has been flat over the last year. Furniture is

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