joanna bujes wrote: >OK, fine. Economists have decided that most of what people spend >money on: houses, education doesn't count. But the question remains: >how does this affect their planning and calculation and the >information that filters out to the uninitiated? My eight year old >daughter had "economics" as a spelling word, and she asked me for a >definition. So, I gave her a definition that an eight year old could >understand: "Economics is the art of making a budget." So, if >economists are dismissing the hugest costs that people have to deal >with as not part of the equation, what does this portend for their >ability to make a budget, a plan, or a prediction.
The CPI market basket is based on the Consumer Expenditure Survey <http://www.bls.gov/cex/home.htm>, not what BLS economists deem it to be, and it includes education, which they weight at 2.7% of spending <ftp://146.142.4.23/pub/news.release/cpi.txt>. In the CES for 2000, households spent 1.5% of after-tax income on education. These numbers seem low, but that's what they say. Doug
