With the rising cost of groceries, housing, healthcare, and other essentials a central issue facing communities across the United States due to the Republican agenda, one expert believes that commonly cited economic statistics aren’t capturing the depth of working families’ struggles.
Gene Ludwig, former US comptroller of the currency under President Bill Clinton, is arguing that the Consumer Price Index (CPI) no longer delivers an accurate portrait of families’ hardships because it does not focus enough on the core costs that impact working people on a daily basis.
As reported by Bloomberg on Monday, Ludwig believes the CPI tracks too many goods that are either luxury purchases or are only bought sporadically. A relevant measure of inflation, he told the outlet, should primarily include goods that are essential to living, such as groceries, housing, healthcare, and energy.
Ludwig and his colleagues at the Ludwig Institute for Shared Economic Prosperity have developed their own measurement called True Living Cost (TLC), which focuses on core household needs and excludes items such as plane tickets and golf carts that are included in the CPI formula.
