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Comment by rhacker | Hacker News Reader

I bet the government's inflation tracker is also connected to walmart links. No wonder the gov things we're at negative inflation.

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Major employers can manipulate govt's in lots of ways like laying off staff to push up the unemployment figures, so if you get a Govt which wants to raise standards for the populations, major employers can make that difficult.

The prime objective of a business is to make profit, everything else is secondary.

I agree with your second paragraph, but I'm failing to understand why a company would want to manipulate government unemployment figures (and indeed, surely if they actually lay off staff then they're not manipulating the reporting/figures, they're changing the reality which is then reflected in the figures)?

I saw a stock market company in the UK do this in the 90's, mostly through natural wastage and not replacing the position, a total ban on recruitment except essential jobs, whilst blaming the new govt.

Businesses need ways to control govt for their own means, just look at the legislation, regulations and business practices that exists and does not exist in one country and not another.

The US Supreme Court case Gonzalez v. Google, even some of the US Judges have said congress need to be addressing this, but these politicians are all bought and paid for, except perhaps Bernie Sanders. Perhaps this is also why US tech stock is laying off big, they know the game is up and changes are a foot.

Look at parts of the German Autobahn where its got no speed limit, do you think the German Car manufacturers had a little bit of a say in keeping things unchanged since 1934?

This reads like it was written by a Markov chain.

>The prime objective of a business is to make profit, everything else is secondary.

can·cer /ˈkansər/ Learn to pronounce noun 1. a disease caused by an uncontrolled division of abnormal cells in a part of the body. "he's got cancer" 2. a practice or phenomenon perceived to be evil or destructive and hard to contain or eradicate. "gambling is a cancer sweeping across the nation"

lol, they have armies of statisticians working on this stuff. its probably better than this person's side project website scraper.

I wish I could go back in time about 40 years, where I had the same faith in government that you have currently. (I'm age 43 at the moment)

The government is definitely full of shit, but historical inflation matches their published numbers pretty well over time. I compared the Big Mac index over the last couple decades, and it fit pretty well

I think most of the extra inflation is going into stocks and housing, and the government's cherry picking hides those factors. The end result is that people can't retire and can't comfortably afford houses, which is why everything sucks now

No you dont, you obviously like not trusting the government. it makes you feel smarter and better than a big organization. But your internet research isnt as good as 1000 econ grads working at the BLS and it will never be.

The US government has extremely strong incentives to report inflation as low as possible, so it's likely less about "thinking" we're at negative and more that they pick and choose data to show it intentionally.

They have very specific baskets of goods and methodologies that they publish details on when changed. And it is done by an independent groups of government employees with lots of eyes, both public and private looking at every detail of what they do. I don't think they are simply cherry picking data.

There are a ton of issues with the official CPI numbers that none of this accounts for and even the BLS admits to in a limited extent. It doesn't account for people buying less expensive substitutes when items get expensive, it only includes "staples" despite consumers potentially spend a ton on newer items, it doesn't account for quality changes of items, it has an undue weight on urban areas, doesn't account for shrinkflation or other hidden forms of inflation, and lots of others.

The BLS isn't independent. The commissioner is hand picked by the senate, and it's currently someone who's very deeply rooted in establishment politics and has close connections to the Koch family, the fossil fuel industry, and Trump.

> It doesn't account for people buying less expensive substitutes when items get expensive

as mentioned in the chained CPI FAQ, "The C-CPI-U employs a formula that reflects the effect of substitution that consumers make across item categories in response to changes in relative prices."

https://www.bls.gov/cpi/additional-resources/chained-cpi-que...

Shrinkflation is captured: https://www.bls.gov/opub/btn/volume-12/measuring-shrinkflati...

Do you have any evidence that the methods to calculate inflation have changed at any point in the Biden administration to show negative inflation right now or are you just heavily implying that it's probably happening without any such evidence?

In September of last year, the frequency of goods selection for calculating CPI changed from every 2 years to every year. The change came into effect in January 2023.

https://www.bls.gov/cpi/notices/2022/methodology-changes-202...

That is not evidence of what GP is talking about.

How is it not?

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