Funny thing about the CPI-U RS series. I was there in 1980, running a large photo lab and doing normal purchasing for it and also being a consumer, same with a lot of my friends.

If anyone would have suggested that inflation was 11.8% YoY at the peak in March 1980 as the RS asserts, they would have been laughed into oblivion. Even CPI-U at 14.8% YoY in 3/80 understated inflation. Annualized inflation was 16.7% and my and my friends experiences and actual expenses and budgets showed it was much closer to 20%.


Another funny thing - let's set that anecdotal but true data aside, and say the RS is actually accurate.
Why then did the BLS even bother making any of the changes if they all boil down to no change?

Doesn't that make the CPI changes over the years by the BLS worthless and useless? Did they really mean to show themselves as useless?

Does anyone really believe that the huge housing bubble didn't affect the CPI-U or CPI-U, given the actual data and facts of OER vs. actual housing prices?

Does anyone really believe that they'd admit to having doctored the CPI-U, unintentionally or not?

Where's the proof that RS even vaguely reflects backing out all the changes? Funny thing - they didn't publish *anything* other than the "corrected" numbers and a chart, much like they don't publish *any* of the details of the Boskin adjustments.

One would think if they had the incontrovertible facts, given the huge amount of folk that believe that the CPI severely understates inflation, that they'd publish all the details so that we'd all shut up.
But they haven't and I don't expect that they will.



And all the inconvenient facts still remain, like how extremely poorly OER tracked housing prices like a (converted to prices) Case Shiller index, or how the supposed CPI-U correctly tracks all consumer medical care when it ignores Medicare and Medicaid, or how they use hedonics without using reverse hedonics, rent being understated for years, not including taxes in the CPI at all, etc. etc. etc., as I've proven and documented.