If you’re going to willy-nilly divide things by random deflators, maybe you should read this (free) manual first.
For a more compact exposition, see this 2008 blogpost, with link to Diewert JEP piece.
Must confess, when I first ran into “Fisher ideal price indices” as an undergraduate, I was befuddled. But I appreciated the knowledge when I became a research assistant.
Appreciate the link. Time to read for me. Now we know Bruce Hall will not read this.
But I think I know why he is confused. It seems his mom is siphoning off Brucie’s ice cream fund. He used to give her $20 a week back in 2021 for a daily serving and now he has to give her $24 a week. But mommy is giving him giving him ice cream only 3 times a week. Hey Brucie – your mommy is eating your ice cream! But can you blame her given what she has to put up with.
Hamas agreed to a ceasefire. Not exactly the one Israel wanted, so Israel intensified bombing of Rafa. Israel has instructed Palestinians to leave Rafa under intensified bombing.
Netanyahu has been threatened with a dissolution of his government if he allows a ceasefire, which is probably a factor here. Netanyahu is putting his rule – and avoidance of prosecution – above peace and the livs of Palestinians.
Its actually above survival of the state of Israel.
It is only a matter of time before the weapons of terror get to truly horrific levels of destruction. At that time the only thing that counts is how many Palestinians are so full of hate that they will be willing to make the ultimate sacrifice in order to kill Israeli jews. Enough people with that level of hate and there will be no place for humans to live and survive in the current territory of Israel.
So the fact that Israel has weapons capable of inflicting a truly horrific level of destruction means it’s OK that there is no place for humans to live and survive in the current territory of Gaza? Just want to make sure I understand your position..
What I am trying to say is that at this point in time Israel can and has been terrorizing civilians in Gaza and killed them at will. This creates a level of hatred against Israel and Jews, among many Palestinians, that will make those Palestinians willing to sacrifice their own life – if it could kill many people in Israel.
Imagine a world where there is a weapon allowing a single terrorist to bring immediate death to hundreds, and contaminate many square miles of land, such that it cannot be lived on for hundreds of years (or would cost hundred of billions to clean). In that world, the power balance would be turned 180 degrees and Israel would be at the mercy of Palestinian terrorists. If that hypothetical scenario happened in the next few years there would be 10’s of thousand Palestinians who are so full of hate they would be happy to die destroying the state of Israel, even if that land of Israel would become unlivable for any human being. In that hypothetical scenario Israel is right now laying the seeds of its own destruction.
Actually on topic:
Remember a couple of days ago I mentioned a CNN report about restaurant sales declining? Of course you don’t. A big part of the story was about the introduction of bargain products to boost sales. Apparently, another reporter with a somewhat wider gaze has been tracking price-cut announcements across the retail sector:
https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.cnn.com/cnn/2024/05/05/business/retailers-cutting-prices
These price cuts are going to help slow inflation. It’s less clear whether it will slow reported inflation after seasonal adjustment. The long-established pattern is for businesses to increase prices in Q1 and then to evaluate the effect of those increases. In Q2, price roll-backs are made if the price increase hurts performance. That has historically shown up in seasonal adjustment patterns. If the price cuts CNN reports are bigger or more widespread than normal, they’ll show up even after seasonal adjustment.
One little complication – seasonal patterns have been pretty badly screwed up by Covid and Covid policies, so seasonal adjustment patterns may be different now than pre-Covid.
Apologies to Ivan, who commented on the CNN report on price cuts already.
Oh, and apologies to CNN – it was CNBC which did the sloppy job on restaurants.
No need to apologize for “being my soulmate” and distractible.
You must be my brother from another mother đ
(I did the exact same thing to pgl on the Dakota puppy killer)
Looks like Moskow Marjorie has blinked (blunk?) She and Speaker Johnson met for a couple of hours and have said they’ll meet again in an effort to allow Madge to avoid calling a vote to remove Johnson.
Earlier, Madge had said the purpose of the vote, which would fail because Democrats would save Johnson, was to make sure voters would see which Representatives voted to keep the House in turmoil and which voted for steady governance. The median voter obviously favors compromise and level-headedness, and the whole “Moskow” thing is gaining traction, so holding the vote would just be another opportunity to make Democrats look good to swing voters, while making Madge look like a egotistical demagogue. Johnson, Madge and House Republicans have a way to save face.
“Speaker Jeffries” has done the work. Speaker Jeffries, with a gavel and all, still has to wait till January.
Yes she is very stupid, but not impossible to bribe. Johnson will give her some little thing she can call “victory” and then she will back down. I think she has had a little view of the end of the road she was about to head down – and it didn’t look that great. She may even have been contacted by some influential GOP members in her own district. Going down in flames may look good on paper but then that heat starts licking your assets.
I enjoyed skimming through about 300 pages of this technical publication before dozing off which sort of reminded me of how to build an automobile starting with extraction of minerals and metals, building fabricating and assembly plants, artwork and prototype and testing, component and assembly manufacturing and six-sigma quality control, and 1 million miles of testing before selling. It’s wonderful that all of the various details and caveats are laid out. It’s also interesting that the BLS surveys 23,000 businesses on 83,000 items with people dedicated to that task plus another contingent to analyze the raw data (https://www.thebalancemoney.com/bureau-of-labor-statistics-3305992).
Because of the small number of business relative to the total selling establishments in the US, there is always going to be some sampling error, but as my grandmother used to say, “It’s better than nothing, Bruce.” At some point, maybe there will be a very powerful AI system that can update price population data rather than sampling, in real time, but for now… it’s better than nothing.
As to whether items like food and energy should be excluded, I guess that depends…. In March, all items excluding food and energy inflation was higher than all items including food and energy. https://www.bls.gov/cpi/?ref=apolloadvisor.com
Bruce Hall: Well, if you think that’s a small sample, you should think twice about ever citing the CPS. Also, you should consider getting access to PriceStats, which is the successor to the Cavallo-Rigobon Billion Prices Project (which I have discussed on this blog several times).
Only small relative to the number of retail businesses in the US (about 500,000 plus a couple million e-commerce sites). I’m sure that as sample sizes go it is deemed adequate.
Do you know ANYTHING about basic statistics? No – I didn’t think so. Yet you chirp away endlessly like the moron you are. Dsiparaging BLS now? Lord – you are retarded.
The only thing SMALL here is Brucie’s little brain. Dude – you have embarrassed your family enough. Move on as you clearly have no clue about this or any other issue.
Brucie you’re just throwing dust in the air – typing a bunch of angry nonsense to distract from your embarrassing mistake.
Your notion that the choice to exclude food and energy from inflation measures ought to depend on whether it makes inflation look worse is consistent with your choice of CPI to deflate personal consumption spending – the choice is driven by your bias, not by fact or logic. You just want an excuse to say inflation is really high because that’s what Republican propagandist are saying ahead of November.
You’ve brought up sampling error without actually telling us what point you’re trying to make, but to justify a preference for CPI over the PCE deflator, you need to show that CPI has a smaller sampling error than the PCE deflator. I’m looking forward to your links to documentation.
By the way, you know why CPI leaves out rural folks’ expenditures to while PCE includes them? That’s both a reason to favor the PCE deflator overall and another reason one should never, ever, ever deflate PCE with CPI.
All good points. Let me just add there is a big difference between sampling errors versus biased estimates. You know the difference but I doubt someone as dim witted as Brucie boy has a clue why this matters even if that is what little Brucie was accusing the BEA of doing. Yea – Brucie is stupid but guess what? Brucie does not care as long as he gets to cuddle with Kelly Anne Conway/
Here’s the other weird thing about Brucie’s latest. He is now mocking the BLS reporting of the price level? Now wait – wasn’t this confused little troll telling us somehow the BLS measure was to be trusted but not the BEA measure. I guess Brucie has malleable opinions.
“mocking” … hmmm … interesting word choice, pgl
From a consumer’s perspective, including food and energy would seem obvious, but I understand the desire to knock those out of the equation for purely analytical smoothing and projections. As for the March, 2024 BLS report, it just seemed ironic that by including those two factors would have made reported inflation lower given the angst about how they inflated inflation a couple of years ago.
Hey Brucie – turn off your AI as it is almost as retarded as you are.
Hey Brucie boy – do you even know what “sampling error” even means? I didn’t think so. Our host has provided free links to various text books. I would ask you to read the Introductory Econometrics text but I know it is WAY over your pea brain.
Israel orders shut down of Al Jazeera in the country, seizes equipment, in âdark day for democracyâ
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/israel-orders-shut-down-of-al-jazeera-in-the-country-seizes-equipment-in-dark-day-for-democracy/ar-BB1lQLNZ
Israel shut down Al Jazeeraâs operations in the country and seized some of its communication equipment Sunday, prompting condemnation from the United Nations and rights groups over Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahuâs moves to restrict press freedoms. The closure comes as ceasefire and hostage negotiations in Cairo show little sign of breakthrough after almost seven months of war, and international concern mounts over Israelâs expected military offensive in southern Gazaâs Rafah, where 1.5 million people are sheltering amid a devastating humanitarian crisis. The Qatari-based news network, which has produced dogged, on the ground reporting of Israelâs war against Hamas in Gaza, called the closure of its offices a âcriminal act,â while critics said the move was a âdark day for democracyâ and that it sets a concerning precedent for other international media outlets operating in Israel.
In a statement posted on X, Netanyahu said: âThe government headed by me unanimously decided: the incitement channel Al Jazeera will be closed in Israel.â The Israeli Ministry of Communications said Sunday it had closed the networkâs Jerusalem offices, and confiscated its communication equipment. âIn addition, the networkâs broadcasts on cable and satellite were stopped, and access to its websites was blocked,â the ministry said.
Netanyahu does not want press coverage of his war crimes in Gaza. The israeli people need to remove him from power.
https://www.facebook.com/nytimes/videos/631984932469455/
https://www.cnn.com/2024/05/07/politics/biden-speech-israel-analysis/index.html
Note to pgl: links are to NY Times and CNN, not Fox News. War is awful and messy and civilians do get killed. But Hamas really doesn’t care about that. Hamas is single-mindedly fanatical about the destruction of Israel and sees the women and children they hide behind and among as “martyrs for Allah”.
As for innocent:
https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/poll-shows-palestinians-back-oct-7-attack-israel-support-hamas-rises-2023-12-14/
The solution: Hamas surrenders unconditionally and is permanently dissolved, Gaza is gradually rebuilt with international monitoring and policing. And someone comes up with a better 2-state solution than the ridiculous and untenable UN Partition Plan that started all of this.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-54116567
Gee Brucie – I guess you are too stupid to realize your solution is what Biden is advocating. Your boy Trump would simply let all Palestinians be slaughtered. MAGA.
“Britain handed the problem to the United Nations, which in 1947 proposed partitioning Palestine into two states – one Jewish, one Arab – with the Jerusalem-Bethlehem area to become an international city. The plan was accepted by Palestine’s Jewish leadership”
Brucie claims this “ridiculous and untenable UN Partition Plan” without noting why he thinks it is ridiculous. Oh yea – Brucie wants all of the West Bank to be owned by Zionists who beat up any Palestinians who dare live there. Yea Brucie like Trump want the Palestinians to be banished even from Gaza so they can put up luxury hotels. Yea – Brucie is that kind of guy!