Some readers have asked for a comparison between the official CPI and the Billion Price Project numbers, which are independently derived using online data.
It’s actually right there at the site. Here are monthly inflation rates:
What you should know is that the BPP numbers don’t exactly measure the same things as the CPI — in particular, no services. So you wouldn’t expect identical numbers. But they don’t look all that different, especially if you focus on longer stretches, not month by month. Over the period covered by the BPP, the overall CPI has risen at an annual rate of 0.75 percent, while the BPP has risen at an annual rate of 1.22 percent — again, not an unreasonable difference. And neither is pointing to a big inflation problem; the BPP numbers suggest that inflation was already easing off before the commodity correction.
Those who insist that the inflation numbers are all cooked, and that we’re really seeing very high inflation, must believe that the MIT guys are in on the plot.
