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Comment by gnodar | Hacker News Reader

I don't know about the best way, but one way to protect against inflation, without concerning yourself with outpacing it, is to purchase TIPS.

https://www.treasurydirect.gov/indiv/products/prod_tips_glan...

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That’s putting a lot of faith on the gov’t to correctly report CPI, when they have every incentive to underreport it.

In fact, they’ve changed the CPI methodology twice in order to report lower average inflation (under the premise that the old measures “overstated” inflation).

>In fact, they’ve changed the CPI methodology twice in order to report lower average inflation (under the premise that the old measures “overstated” inflation).

Source?

There are numerous. Google search “hedonic adjustment CPI”

On the surface the adjustments seem pretty reasonable to me. As a thought experiment, would you want to live in the 70s just to earn 5x more? I wouldn't. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3dL5G4QYEhc

As a software engineer, I think I'd take that deal.

It'd be nice to be able to afford a home in Vancouver.

Plus no smart phones, good riddance.

https://www.investopedia.com/articles/07/consumerpriceindex....

>Over the years, the methodology used to calculate the CPI has undergone numerous revisions. According to the BLS, the changes removed biases that caused the CPI to overstate the inflation rate. The new methodology takes into account changes in the quality of goods and substitution. Substitution, the change in purchases by consumers in response to price changes, changes the relative weighting of the goods in the basket.2 The overall result tends to be a lower CPI. However, critics view the methodological changes and the switch from a COGI to a COLI as a purposeful manipulation that allows the U.S. government to report a lower CPI.

But adjusting the basket totally makes sense from a reporting point of view. Consider the reverse. As countries have gotten richer/industrialized, so have their consumption of meats. If a country is undergoing development, should their CPI basket continue to assume that people eat meat once a week, even though most people eat meat multiple times per week?

> the gov’t

Can you please define what/who you mean by "the government"? The CPI changed in the 1990s after a Senate Finance Committee report said it was over-estimated (i.e., too high):

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boskin_Commission

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Consumer_Price_I...

If you don't like how BLS (Executive Branch) reports the CPI, perhaps talk to the Senate (Legislative Branch)?

While it certainly provides some hedge inflation adjusted bonds don't seem that helpful when the government can pick and choose what's in the basket of goods the government uses to calculate inflation to get the number it wants.

Bear in mind that TIPS can go negative too: https://www.thebalance.com/why-are-tips-yields-negative-4168...

This means you will still lose money relative to inflation, just with tigher bounds.

IMHO this is one of the worst ways to deal with inflation. As I understand it, bond yield rates rise with inflation and so a current low interest yielding bond will drop in value when higher yielding coupons hit the market. But I’m not an expert.

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