HOW BEST TO MEASURE INFLATION?
(FORTUNE Magazine) – Forget politics. It’s economics that makes for really strange bedfellows. Take the increasingly popular idea that the consumer price index overstates inflation. Bunkmates as odd as Bill Clinton, Bob Dole, Pat Moynihan, and Newt Gingrich have each hinted they’d like to “correct” the CPI downward. If they follow through, they’ll affect all Americans’ lives–and not just by slowing increases in wage, rent, and other contracts governed by the CPI. They will also rewrite history. For if the CPI is too high, the widely quoted statement that Americans’ real wages declined over the past 20 years would be disproved.
