Yet despite these increases, and the enormous role played by oil and its by-products in the economy, the BLS has continued to report the CPI to be nearly flat. The BLS has been working for the last few years to portray the U.S. economy as strong and inflation free. The government has manipulated the CPI inflation numbers in several ways. The core rate CPI is not a better indicator of inflation, it just paints a better picture for the government to exclaim that inflation is not rising and the economy is healthy. But the average consumer is not fooled by this attempted cover-up.
Consumers have to buy food, drive to work, and heat their homes.
They know that food and energy prices can't be taken out of the equation, because they still have to pay their food and energy bills each month. The theory asserts the Internet and computers are restructuring the economy to the point that crude oil is no longer considered to be important in the economy. To simply eliminate the figures because they are considered less important does nothing but provide inaccurate inflation information that is crucial in determining the state of the economy. If you don't like the results, change the formula until you get results you like. Since the beginning of the Clinton era in the early 1990s, the government has made gradual adjustments to the CPI formula in order to create a lower inflation figure.