Follow-up

Recently I posted an article I wrote in 1997 – We Lose Money on Every Car We Sell But Make It Up In Volume or The Accountant Ascendant. In it I mentioned that a study (published in 1996) concluded that the CPI was underestimating the true degree of inflation by 1.1%. Now another report concludes that we are still overestimating how much it costs to live in the US.  Prices, Poverty, and Inequality: Why Americans Are Better Off Than You Think argues that properly tallied the poverty rate has fallen in the US by 60% since 1970. Who knew?

Yet again proof that he who controls the numbers controls the world.The poor in the US are the first of their kind to be plagued by obesity. Poverty in America is as much (perhaps more) a failure to cope as a failure to earn.If this new analysis is correct the income divide between rich and poor is not anywhere near as bad as commonly depicted.