{"id":7254,"date":"2011-09-15T17:45:53","date_gmt":"2011-09-16T00:45:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/ClaireWolfe\/?p=7254"},"modified":"2011-09-15T17:45:53","modified_gmt":"2011-09-16T00:45:53","slug":"unchain-my-heart","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/2011\/09\/15\/unchain-my-heart\/","title":{"rendered":"Unchain my heart …"},"content":{"rendered":"

“Chained CPI.” Whotta concept.<\/p>\n

You may have heard of this. The Bureau of Labor Statistics has apparently been tallying it for nine years<\/a>, right along with CPI-U, CPI-W and all the other variations of the Consumer Price Index, including that perennial favorite, “core CPI,” which considers food, fuel, and shelter to be outside<\/i> of the core costs of our lives.<\/p>\n

Anyhow, “chained CPI” isn’t a new concept. But it’s new to me. I’ve just heard of it because there’s talk of shifting to it to determine cost of living increases<\/a> for social security, federal pensions, veterans programs and such. Now, much as we all might wish to see those expenses go down, is this really an honest way to do it? Especially when you’re talking about little old ladies and disabled vets?<\/p>\n

Here’s how chained CPI works, according to a favorite explanation<\/a>:<\/p>\n

The regular CPI measures the costs each month of a market basket of items that average Americans may purchase each month and so it tells us how much prices are rising, what the inflation rate is. The chained CPI is identical, really, to the regular CPI in all respects except one. It includes an adjustment so that if, for example, beef prices rise much faster than chicken prices, and consumers, as a result, buy less beef and more chicken, it picks up the switching from the beef to the chicken, which makes their total costs for the month rise a little less quickly than if you assumed they continued to buy the same amount of beef and the same amount of chicken as before.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Uh huh. And when chicken gets too expensive, the index adjusts your cost of living for lima beans. And when lima beans get too expensive, the index adjusts your cost of living for cat food. Presumably. When you can’t afford cat food, maybe the index goes up again to pay for the cost of a coffin. Who knows?<\/p>\n

But from beef you can’t afford to kitty kibble — no inflation!<\/i> Hey, ain’t it grand?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“Chained CPI.” Whotta concept. You may have heard of this. The Bureau of Labor Statistics has apparently been tallying it for nine years, right along with CPI-U, CPI-W and all the other variations of the Consumer Price Index, including that perennial favorite, “core CPI,” which considers food, fuel, and shelter to be outside of the core costs of our lives. Anyhow, “chained CPI” isn’t a new concept. But it’s new to me. I’ve just heard of it because there’s talk of shifting to it to determine cost of living increases for social security, federal pensions, veterans programs and such. Now,…<\/p>\n

Continue readingUnchain my heart …<\/span><\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7254","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-government","category-money","ratio-natural","entry"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7254","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7254"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7254\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7254"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7254"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7254"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}