What are some of the ways that governments disguise the true inflation rate?
• Just plain reporting incorrect data about money supply, rate of money creation, economic growth – i.e., lying. • Ceasing the reporting of money supply or other important economic statistics. See here for an example. • Altering how statistics like a Consumer Price Index are calculated (see above). • Inventing concepts like a “core” Consumer Price Index, which excludes essential things like food and energy. • Wage & price controls • Favoring or encouraging redefinition of words like inflation to exclude major assets or goods from its definition. • International currency controls, which make it more difficult to move money out of a country. • Savings laws, designed to force people to hold money and not spend. Those will artifically and temporarily lower apparent inflation. Examples are war bonds, patriotic appeals, encouraging emergency funds, temporary taxes to discourage consumption, and the “Whip Inflation Now (W.I.N.)” program of U.S. President Ford in the mid 1970s. • Adding limita
• Just plain reporting incorrect data about money supply, rate of money creation, economic growth – i.e., lying. • Ceasing the reporting of money supply or other important economic statistics. See here for an example. • Altering how statistics like a Consumer Price Index are calculated (see above). • Inventing concepts like a “core” Consumer Price Index, which excludes essential things like food and energy. • Wage & price controls • Favoring or encouraging redefinition of words like inflation to exclude major assets or goods from its definition. • International currency controls, which make it more difficult to move money out of a country. • Savings laws, designed to force people to hold money and not spend. Those will artifically and temporarily lower apparent inflation. Examples are war bonds, patriotic appeals, encouraging emergency funds, temporary taxes to discourage consumption, and the “Whip Inflation Now” program of U.S. President Ford in the mid 1970s. • Adding limitations to
