Hacker News Reader

Comment by jpadkins | Hacker News Reader

The 1980 and prior CPI calculation is still calculated here: http://www.shadowstats.com/alternate_data/inflation-charts

As inflation was measured in the 1970's, we are experiencing ~15% consumer inflation.

I'm no economist, but this [1] badeconomics post and the comment section were quite convincing for me as to why shadowstats is not a good resource.

[1]https://www.reddit.com/r/badeconomics/comments/3zik5t/shadow...

thanks! I didn't know shadowstats was just adding a constant to the BLS data. I thought they were actually re-calculating using the pre-1980 method as they claim.

ShadowStats claims ~8% inflation since 2000, i.e. a 5x cumulative increase in cost of living. I don't buy it.

I mean, you could buy a 3 bed / 1.5 bath house in the bay area for around $200k in 2000. 5x is roughly correct, easily.

That's specifically the Bay Area though, and inflation is a national average. Most other cities have not had that kind of housing price growth. I like to occasionally look at the sale prices of the houses I grew up in (partly because the listing photos are interesting to see how the new owners have redone the insides), and they've gone up about 2x since 2000, or annualized 3-4%.

Two examples: 3bd house in the Chicago suburbs, sold for $190,000 in 1999, and $420,000 in 2021. 5bd house in the Houston suburbs, sold for $290,000 in 2003, and $480,000 in 2022. If there were 5x price growth, these houses should be selling for $1m-$1.5m.

Here's a chart from 1997 to 2018 with prices with and without inflation adjustment: https://www.vitalsigns.mtc.ca.gov/home-prices

Case Shiller home price index is another measure that shows 4X increase in housing costs since 2000. housing is a large component of cost of living.

https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/case-shiller-home...

See fork above, shadowstats is probably overstating but BLS data is probably understating consumer inflation.

> Case Shiller home price index is another measure that shows 4X increase in housing costs since 2000. housing is a large component of cost of living

Case Shiller measures home prices (asset cost), not housing cost (rent expense, actual or forgone by choosing not to rent out a property you own.)

Also, the repeat sales method it uses has structural biases that favor increases.

What percentage of household spending did they allot for high speed home internet access in the 1970s inflation statistics? How about people's budgets for cell phones and personal computer hardware?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com