Rates unchanged!!

[der_kommissar]

I said I'd come back when I figured out a way to make money of this crowds ability to completely convince themselves that the official inflation numbers are wrong without being able to provide a single number to back up their point. So, I'd like to propose a bilateral forward contract. These are not regulated, unlike futures contracts. It will work this way. On Oct 1st, my counterparty(s) goes to three of their local supermarkets and takes pictures of the prices of a basket of 10 staple foods. We'll say milk, sugar, flour, potatoes, beans, rice, eggs, butter, cheese, and vegetable oil. You send me the pictures of those prices. I'll do the same (I live in a medium size east coast suburban area, and yes, my wife and I alternate weeks to do grocery shopping for our family that is decidedly not in the top 1% of wage earners). Exactly one year later we go to the same stores and take pictures of the prices for those exact same items, same brand, size, etc. All pictures get posted here. We compare the percentage change in prices to the unadjusted percentage change in prices for those commodity classes at http://www.bls.gov/cpi/cpid1508.pdf If the average actual prices you and I photographed increased at a rate 5% greater or more than the official CPI rate for those classes, I pay you $1,000 and make a post that the evidence has forced me to believe the official CPI numbers are a conspiracy and I'll never defend them here again. Anything else, you pay me $1,000, and post here that the evidence has forced you to believe the official CPI numbers are not a conspiracy and you'll never post unsubstantiated assertions that official numbers are lies because you say they are here again. I'm happy to put a contract together for anyone who's willing to put their money where their mouth is.
Several posters have claimed rampant inflation in staple goods and are just certain the federal government is fabricating inflation numbers in a significant way. If you're sure the federal government is lying and understating inflation by a significant amount, this is free money for you.
I want to be clear that at this point I'm simply trying to debunk the persistent, completely irrational insistence by the conspiracy theorists that the official CPI numbers are completely faked, nothing else. I've asked for just a shred of quantitative evidence that this is the case and all I got back was the assertion that 1 percenters are hoarding 5 pound sacks of sugar! It doesn't get more "real world" than pictures in your local supermarket, are you up for it der_kommissar, eurusdzn, k p, spacewiz, Tsing Tao?

I never said a thing about inflation "going forward", which is what your proposed bet would uncover. I've simply been talking about inflation in the past, something which you continue to deny via your "official statistics".

Now, if I could go out and hop in Stewie's time machine and go back a couple of years, odds are that I would win this bet...

And please stop with this constant reference to "conspiracy theories".

 

[der_kommissar]

Oh brother. Tell all that to a 75year old living on fixed income. You are young arent you?
Absolutely no perspective or real world experience . But, i am sure you can gather government statistics on life in decades past. Wake up.

He does seem rather eager to beat everyone over the head with these academic arguments.

 

[Sig]

Oh brother. Tell all that to a 75year old living on fixed income. You are young arent you?
Absolutely no perspective or real world experience . But, i am sure you can gather government statistics on life in decades past. Wake up.

In my 40s, I posted my background previously in this thread but since der_kommissar claimed that one post ever of my background on ET was me "constantly give us your "qualifications" I won't repeat them and really by background is irrelevant. Maybe you haven't read the thread, where I've been called a politician, a fed, a 1 percenter who's butler does my shopping for me, and now a kid with no real world perspective, crazy range of ad hominem attacks and yet no one has presented a shred of evidence that the federal reported CPI is false or what my background has to do with if it is or not! A 75 year old lives in the same world as you and I do, and the price they pay for food, energy, transportation, medical care, and everything else that makes up the CPI has gone up by roughly the amount CPI has stated, which isn't much. I've asked you repeatedly to point out specifically where the report is false, and I've offered to come down to your level and compare food staple prices, giving you easy money in the process if you truly believe what you say you do, and all you can come back with is that I must be young.

 

[Sig]

I never said a thing about inflation "going forward", which is what your proposed bet would uncover. I've simply been talking about inflation in the past, something which you continue to deny via your "official statistics".

Now, if I could go out and hop in Stewie's time machine and go back a couple of years, odds are that I would win this bet...

And please stop with this constant reference to "conspiracy theories".

If you believe that the hundreds of GS employees in the Labor Department who published CPI over the past several years lied about the numbers, you're a "conspiracy theorist", no way around that. Are you now saying they all lied about the inflation numbers and published a false CPI index every month for years, but they've suddenly stopped and over the next year it will be accurate? You know that sounds ever more tinfoil hat, don't you? At this point I'm simply trying to point out the ridiculous lengths you're going to in order to maintain this fiction in your head that the published CPI numbers are all a lie. You're doing a great job making my point.

 

[Sig]

Jesus man just go look up "problems with CPI" on Google rather than having everyone take part in some ridiculous mechanical turk project to collect a bunch of grocery prices in a hugely error-prone fashion.

The fact of the matter is that if everything lined up like you expect it should we wouldn't be sitting here at year 7 of ZIRP.

It is clearly obvious to any rational critical thinker that something seriously stinks here and only the "everything is great!" crowd keeps buying the bullshit.

2005-2007 comes to mind.

Just once, make a concrete argument of what part of CPI is faked. Sure any measure of inflation can be critiques on things like what should be considered "core", those are discussions among intelligent well meaning people. This is a bunch of people claiming CPI is faked, the numbers aren't real. Without a shred of evidence to support the claim. And your critique is "look it up on Google". Then state that your claim is obvious to "any rational critical thinker" while failing to provide a single data point, which is generally what rational, critical thinkers do.
As I've said over and over, collecting a bunch of grocery prices is hugely error prone and far inferior to exhaustive, careful measurement. Which we call that careful measurement CPI. Which you all think is faked, apparently because you think milk prices have gone up over the past several years and sugar is now sold in 4 pound bags, which on this post are the only measurable support that's been provided for the belief that CPI is fake. So I'm offering my money to show that even that far inferior way that so many of you have based your worldview on is wrong. The fact that no-one has take me up on it yet says volumes.
Its great that you're all arguing for the official CPI measure and against anecdotal conclusions about inflation based on your remembered grocery store prices and "common sense", though. Looks like I've made at least one of my points.

 

[Sig]

He does seem rather eager to beat everyone over the head with these academic arguments.

Which is it, an academic argument or a ridiculous exercise of actually taking pictures of prices of food staples in your grocery store, which would seem to epitomize the real world? Your solution for showing why we shouldn't trust the published CPI numbers is.....?

 

[i960]

Nobody thinks CPI is faked. They think CPI is an inaccurate measure of true inflation. So when someone says "the numbers aren't real" they mean "they aren't a true and accurate representation of inflation."

You're hammering it home here that it should be proven to you when you're fully capable of looking it up on your own.

 

[der_kommissar]

Nobody thinks CPI is faked. They think CPI is an inaccurate measure of true inflation. So when someone says "the numbers aren't real" they mean "they aren't a true and accurate representation of inflation."

You're hammering it home here that it should be proven to you when you're fully capable of looking it up on your own.

yeah, I don't think that he's heard of Shadow Stats...In any event, I'm done arguing with the wind up doll...he sounds as if he's about to go postal.

 

[Sig]

Nobody thinks CPI is faked. They think CPI is an inaccurate measure of true inflation. So when someone says "the numbers aren't real" they mean "they aren't a true and accurate representation of inflation."

You're hammering it home here that it should be proven to you when you're fully capable of looking it up on your own.

I'm pretty sure when spacewiz said "And don't tell me those "independent public and private sources" you mention are really independent or worthy of trust and not just manipulated." he was saying the CPI number was being manipulated. Or when eurusdzn said "Regardless of input costs over time you cannot underestimate the skill of the "man" to maintain and increase prices. All my bills that I pay each month are substantially higher than they were 5-10 years ago." that he thinks the numbers are fake" Or der_kommissar with "Yep, unfortunately Sig doesn't live in the real world...The "official numbers" can't be wrong, we must all be conspiracy kooks since we can't see all of that deflation all around us." And then he refers us all to Shadow Stats. Let me quote from top center of their home page "Have you ever wondered why the CPI, GDP and employment numbers run counter to your personal and business experiences? The problem lies in biased and often-manipulated government reporting."

i960, there's good arguments to be made that the index isn't an accurate measurement of inflation, no question. That clearly isn't what a good number of posters in this thread are arguing, however, nor is it what I'm arguing against. They've somehow come to the belief that the government/economists/"the man" are generally flat out faking data. I was curious if they could provide any evidence of this supposedly manipulated data, and clearly they can't, nor are they willing to put it to any kind of verifiable test.
Its interesting that although my motives and background have been repeatedly called into question while I simply repeatedly ask for data, I'm "about to go postal" in der_kommissar's world. That says a lot about his world.

 

[i960]

If we change the way the index is measured to be beneficial in some kind of selfish fashion then we're essentially "faking" numbers for a specific purpose.

To give an extreme example if we decided tomorrow that CPI will be changed to only track the price of oil while the price of oil itself wouldn't be faked the intent of the index sure as hell would.

People bring up shadowstats because its actually addressing these issues head on.

http://www.shadowstats.com/article/no-438-public-comment-on-inflation-measurement