The BLS's own response is here . The politics of counting In normal times, statisticians do their work in peace, free of the scrutiny of politicians and opinioneers. But these aren't normal times. Under its new Republican masters, the once-honest Joint Tax Committe of Congress is now playing games to disguise the class effects of proposed tax and budget cuts. This is fairly straightforward deviousness.
More complex manipulations are also underway.
Whatever the spirit in which the numerical exercises were first undertaken, both are being used to screw the weak. What follows owes a lot to Dean Baker of the Economic Policy Institute , author of two recent dissections of the numbers. Social Security checks would get a little less bigger every year, and tax brackets, indexed for inflation, would creep up more slowly, boosting revenues. The BLS addressed this complaint with a technical change last January. But substitutions may be made grudgingly, so there may be an intuitive point to retaining a fixed market basket.