Inflation Manipulation? Screwing the Numbers

The first time in my lifetime of observing politics and government that manipulation of economic figures to reflect ideology rather than reality was, of course, during the faith based administration of GWB.  Unemployment too high?  Stop counting people that have been unemployed for 6 months and count people that have gone from $50k/year to $15k as being fully employed.  This didn't matter to that administration because the people affected weren't wealthy, and that's all that counted.  Well, nothing's changed.  Inflation rates are supposedly very low but this article demonstrates how the numbers are being jacked by our new Republican administration.

According to the CPI, we've experienced low and stable inflation over the last few decades. But, one only needs to look up the prices of cars, jeans, college tuition, health care, rent, and many other day to day items to realize that the average American's expenditures have grown at a much higher rate than the reported inflation number (see shadowstats.com for an eye-opening education on "changes" (perhaps, manipulation) of this calculation). At the same time, the average American's pre-tax income has remained stagnant for the last decade. Rising prices versus stagnant incomes is, by our definition, inflation because the purchasing power of the average American has decreased over the last decade. While our definition may be relative, the result has the same deleterious impact on those it affects as does the tunnel vision definition of inflation.