The post that I quoted to start this thread assumes that because imputations are rising, price changes are not getting recorded and the data is not reliable. Wrong! The data is slightly less accurate, but imputation raises error as opposed to skewing prices either way.
I am sick and tired of people engagement farming by claiming dedicated, hard-working civil servants who are being screwed over by Congress are somehow in the bag for Trump because there aren’t enough of them to do the work in the best possible way. Y’all should be ashamed of yourselves.
I should have been slightly more precise: Trump admin actions alone didn’t get us here, it was years of starving statistical agencies that made them vulnerable to this sort of data quality tipping point.
Thanks for these threads. They're always helpful.
Yes, and the implication of the original post that the increase in imputed numbers is some scheme to hide inflation is nonsense.
my take away: the data is less reliable. this thread mentions reductions in workforce. more work usually results in a reduction in quality… presumably also in the imputed data 30% >> 10% so we’re are also comparing apples/oranges with the last few months of CPI. it’s risky to assume trend is valid
i think the last election showed that while obviously the FOMC needs to know the actual inflation rate, what matters politically is the price things people buy frequently like food and gas, and not big purchases. The political problem is that under 55s are used to inflation that was freakishly low.
FACTS DON'T CARE ABOUT YOUR FEELINGS...unless the facts are an inconvenience to my arguments, in which case we should stop investing in facts.
yes, but voters care about their feelings and not the facts. politics is perception
Thank you. I saw that click bait post from the clickiest-baitiest account yesterday and did not know how to go about verifying it. I work in finance too and just simply saying "this line went up and this line went down means what I'm about to tell you is true." You gave me the context I needed.
Maybe Spence is over the top here but can we really believe ANY economic numbers coming from this administration?
bsky.app/profile/pear...
📌
thanks for at least answering a question i wondered of "does the CPI ask the groceries themselves of the cost for items or are there literally people wandering around stores with a list of items to look for the price of where they live"
There are in fact people wandering around yes! It’s a pretty cool job tbh.
Only if the price checks you do have aren't biased
Have they migrated to checking things online? Maybe it's time for an AI agent? Groceries can be checked via instacart. And while instacart has fees at least you can get consistent data around the country from any computer in the world.
Instacart also inflates the price of ítems compared to store prices for Hidden extra margins.
That's what I was referring to when I said "And while instacart has fees at least you can get consistent data around the country from any computer in the world." Data gatherers felt they wanted to pull prices without the markup, there are some grocery stores on instacart that don't have the markup.
Great thread. One of my big takeaways from COVID was that most people have no clue how probabilities and statistics work. This includes a lot of people who should know better like journalists. As a result it is very easy for them to attribute to malice what can be explained by chance.
I’m not even expecting people to be able to do the math, just try to get an intuitive understanding of how sampling and probabilities work. Now if you’ll excuse me I better go give my kids their nightly lesson on how to gamble.
Can't believe they're appeasing Trump by no longer getting the pure Platonic rate of inflation from checking the inflation gauge on the Phillips Machine