I wrote an essay on Government Data and have already received feedback from some notable individuals. I would like to share it with you and I welcome your responses and criticisms. I hope that it is not only informative, but helps engage people to take interest and open debate as to how we should or should not measure economic conditions.
The essay is long, so I decided not to post it. You can read it here:
I read it. Its okay. You might want to fix grammar errors (I found 3) as well as some things that are awkwardly worded. Overall it is very informative and funny at times. Your mathematician/statistics friend’s story was well chosen.
I think your analysis on how they’ve changed the CPI is good. You show how they’ve changed it to serve their own political ends and why it no longer measures what they claim it measures.
I wouldn’t focus on the bill clinton sex-scandal thing very much, except for when you’re talking about what the news would rather report on.
You need to define inflation in your article. Maybe you do, but I don’t recall it. Personally, I think the Austrian definition of inflation is the only consistent one: “increases in the base money supply”. This departs from the traditional concept of inflation which is trying to measure the value of money. I have seen many Austrian economists not even use inflation as a measure of the economy, preferring instead to use things like disposable income etc. It really depends on what the economist is trying to say about the economy. I don’t believe that either the Austrian definition of inflation nor the traditional conception are necessary to talk about economics.
If you agree with me you might want to consider shifting the focus of the article onto how the CPI measurements of inflation distort economic realities to make the administration look good.
I also thought you could have used a big timeline of events in inflation-definition history. Like, 1971: Doucehbag excludes bread from CPI. 1975: Douchebag 2 divides 1975 CPI by 1.2 to offset temporary effects of terrorism bla bla. Its a lot of research but it would build the case nicely against government.
Thanks very much for taking the time to read it. I too think it is probably too wordy. I would like to take another stab at it - you are right a good intro to inflation (definition) would be great. The time line idea is also a very good idea, which I would like to do in a individual essay. Like the time line of government changes in data.
Prohobo, you should probably remove that link in your signature.
No prob…done…