According to my friend Peter Donohue: Yes, the first time was in MA in the 1860s due to war-time inflation. The govt's index derived from this experience, and the desire in the 1870s-80s of workers living in newly incorporated towns around Boston to have their Boston wages indexed to reflect the higher costs of living in those newly affluent towns. These towns became tax-havens, which radically increased property values there and drew the affluent out of Boston. Long-time residents of those towns found their property taxes dramatically increased as property values were pushed up by these changes. See Bass: Streetcar Suburbs for illustration of the process. At 01:13 PM 12/10/98 -0800, you wrote: >Is it true that labor unions had developed and were using Consumer Price >Indices before the founding of the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, and >that the labor unions mostly have surrendered this job to the BLS? > >Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] & >http://clawww.lmu.edu/Faculty/JDevine/jdevine.html
