Answer: The CPI represents all goods and services purchased for consumption by the reference population (Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers or Consumer Price Index for Urban Wage Earners and Clerical Workers). The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) has classified all expenditure items into more than 200 categories, arranged into eight major groups. Major groups and examples of categories in each are as follows:
FOOD AND BEVERAGES (breakfast cereal, milk, coffee, chicken, wine, full service meals and snacks); HOUSING (rent of primary residence, owners' equivalent rent, fuel oil, bedroom furniture); APPAREL (men's shirts and sweaters, women's dresses, jewelry); TRANSPORTATION (new vehicles, airline fares, gasoline, motor vehicle insurance); MEDICAL CARE (prescription drugs and medical supplies, physicians' services, eyeglasses and eye care, hospital services); RECREATION (televisions, cable television, pets and pet products, sports equipment, admissions); EDUCATION AND COMMUNICATION (college tuition, postage, telephone services, computer software and accessories); OTHER GOODS AND SERVICES (tobacco and smoking products, haircuts and other personal services, funeral expenses).
What actually happened in 1999, is that they changed the weight that gasoline and food have on the CPI. The items are still included, just weighted differently than they were before.
we must as a species go into a period of shrinkage that we have not experienced since the Dark Ages and the Black Plague -- lucysmom (A.K.A. minnigold)
He has also removed "cost" of 'energy' and 'food' from the cost of living equation.
Bull.
Since the year 2000, there's been two inflation numbers released simultaneously, a core number, which is ex-food and energy, and an aggregate number which includes them.
I'll believe that a corporation is a person 1 second after Texas executes one...
