From the Bureau of Lies and Scams (BLS):
The Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers (CPI-U) was unchanged in December on a seasonally adjusted basis, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today. Over the last 12 months, the all items index increased 1.7 percent before seasonal adjustment.
Uh huh.
(By the way, if this is an annualized number there is no seasonal adjustment, since there is no seasonal difference between December of this year and December of last.)
Energy was the big decrease this month, down 2.3% on the month. Since energy is 9.7% of the "average" basket, this helped out a great deal. Note that energy is a much larger percentage of spend for poor people, so decreases here help them far more than they help wealthy people -- and vice-versa.
Oh, and for those who claim that Medicare and Medicaid expenses have flattened, as I have repeatedly pointed out all that's going on here is a cost shift. The detail data in the CPI table makes this clear -- here it is:
That's a 9.9% annual increase. What's worse is that the BLS claims that only 0.656% of your household expense profile is comprised of health insurance.
Oh really? The alleged $100,000 annual income household spends $656 per year on such services? That's off by at least a factor of 10!
If you're wondering why the so-called "inflation numbers" are completely full of crap you only need to look right here at entries such as this.
