Inflation Gaslighting

The U.S. government currently spends over $2.8 billion every day just on net interest payments, which now exceeds the entire domestic military budget.

Following the 1996 Boskin Commission, the Bureau of Labor Statistics shifted from measuring a “fixed basket of goods” to a Cost-of-Living Index (COLI), effectively allowing the government (the issuer) to artificially suppress official inflation figures.

The modern CPI model assumes that if beef becomes too expensive, consumers will substitute it with chicken. The article highlights the criticism that this changes the index from measuring a constant standard of living to measuring the “cost of survival.”