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Costs of living rise and fall differently in different areas. Do you think that prices in Beverly Hills, CA change the same as prices in Gary, IN? Of course not! The Chapwood Index reports the unadjusted actual cost and price fluctuation of the top 500 items on which Americans spend their after-tax dollars in the 50 largest cities in the nation.
Written by Lorimer Wilson, editor of munKNEE.com – Your KEY To Making Money!
There are two possible approaches to assessing the true rate of price inflation:
- you can reverse all the tweaks government statisticians have implemented over the decades to reduce the apparent rate (as does John Williams of Shadowstats.com), or
- you can collect a statistically significant sample of price data independently and turn that into an index and the Chapwood Index does just that and deserves wider publicity.
| City | CY 2014 | CY 2015 | CY 2016 | CY 2017 | CY 2018 | 5yr Avg |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
|
1.
New York
|
12.4% | 10.3% | 10.8% | 11.2% | 12.6% | 11.5% |
|
2.
Los Angeles
|
12.1% | 10.9% | 11.1% | 11.6% | 12.1% | 11.6% |
|
3.
Chicago
|
10.9% | 9.8% | 10.9% | 11.0% | 11.9% | 10.9% |
|
4.
Houston
|
9.2% | 8.4% | 8.9% | 8.7% | 8.8% | 8.8% |
|
5.
Philadelphia
|
9.7% | 10.8% | 11.2% | 10.8% | 10.6% | 10.6% |
|
6.
Phoenix
|
7.8% | 7.6% | 8.1% | 9.2% | 7.4% | 8.0% |
|
7.
San Antonio
|
8.7% | 8.4% | 8.8% | 8.8% | 9.3% | 8.8% |
|
8.
San Diego
|
13.1% | 13.0% | 12.2% | 11.8% | 11.7% | 12.4% |
|
9.
Dallas
|
9.1% | 9.4% | 8.9% | 9.2% | 8.7% | 9.1% |
|
10.
San Jose
|
13.7% | 13.3% | 12.9% | 13.3% | 12.7% | 13.2% |
If you’re working to just beat the government CPI, you’re falling further and further behind every year and putting yourself at serious risk of jeopardizing your financial security. The Chapwood Index uncovers the negative result of doing this in relation to retirement benefits, personal income, and investment goals.
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Related Articles from the munKNEE Vault:
1. Debunking the Validity of ShadowStats’ Inflation Numbers
Shadowstats presents what they claim to be the original methodology used by the government to calculate the rate of inflation in the U.S. but Shadowstats’ John Williams is not calculating inflation any differently. He is not using the 1980s or 1990s methodology… [Instead,] all he’s is doing is taking the CPI data and adding on an arbitrary constant to make it look like inflation is higher!
2. Official and ShadowStats Monthly Inflation Rates: 1872 to Present
[There is a considerable difference between the official BLS inflation rate (1.63%) and the ShadowStats’ alternative method of calculating consumer prices (9.07%) but] I believe that the optimum method is probably somewhere between the two. [Let me explain.]3. Real-time Inflation Data is Now Available – Finally
Inflation is a significant measurement for the economic health of countries around the world but rates are often reported weeks after data is collected. To address this problem, two professors at MIT Sloan School of Management have launched the Billion Prices Project which is the first website to publish daily price indexes and provide real-time inflation estimates around the world.
4. Inflation: What Do the Non-CPI Inflation Gauges Say It Is?
Whenever the BLS posts their monthly CPI there’s always the same response from critics that the index is flawed. That’s fine. I think a healthy dose of skepticism regarding government data is perfectly good. So let’s take a look at some independent gauges to see where prices are.
5. The Big Mac Index Reveals the REAL Facts On U.S. Inflation!
A look at the trend in prices of the Big Mac clearly shows that investors are being penalized with higher inflation, lower income from bonds and certificates of deposit and being led to believe that the economy is growing better than it really is. [Let me explain.]
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anything like that before. So nice to find another person with some genuine thoughts on this subject.
Seriously.. thank you for starting this up. This website is one thing that’s needed on the internet, someone with a little
originality!