If some price indexes are "clearly absurd", then they apparently have some value to us - for if they were valueless, then why call any particular one "absurd"? If they yield different results, then so be it - let us simply be open about how the different indexes are defined and what result they yield. The absence of a canonical standard will of course not be useful to people primarily interested in such things as pissing contests between nations, but the results should be useful nonetheless.
We commonly talk about tradeoffs, e.g., "if I do this then I will benefit in one way but lose in another". We can do the same thing with price indexes. "In this respect things have improved but in this other respect things have gotten worse."
Constant:
We commonly talk about tradeoffs, e.g., "if I do this then I will benefit in one way but lose in another". We can do the same thing with price indexes. "In this respect things have improved but in this other respect things have gotten worse."
Sure, but such an approach would deny the validity of all these "real" economic variables that are based on a scalar price index. In particular, it would definitely mean discarding the entire concept of "real GDP" as incoherent. This would mean conceding the criticis...
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