they wouldn't, necessarily. The statistics people try to get a fix on the genuine average price of things, but it's a hell of a job to be sure you're comparing like with like, and the bias is likely to be entirely one way; as Michael noted earlier, how often do they make a mistake in your favour, or give you an undisclosed discount? The issues are not a million miles different from those involved in hedonic pricing. It's also very common indeed for price indices to be moved by cheap financing or discount deals which aren't necessarily available to poorer people; the differential between average prices and prices charged in poor urban areas where people don't have cars to drive to the supermarket is a known problem in the UK stats at least.
dd -----Original Message----- From: PEN-L list [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Behalf Of Doug Henwood Sent: 19 July 2004 18:22 To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: oops, again Michael Perelman wrote: >Most of the fees and usurious interest rates and the like fall on >the backs of the poor. >Besides falling outside the CPI calculations, they also mean that >the distribution of >income is even more lopsided. How do you know they do? They should be included in the CPI calculations, based on the principles of the thing. Doug
