It's truly Gordonian, while if Brad ever gets to rewriting his book on the standard of living of people in the 20th century, he should read it and learn. If anything, the standard consumer price index measures the E Coli. But as Eric so clearly shows, one can suffer a fall in real income even if both one's nominal income and the CPI are constant, if the needed expenditures that aren't counted as part of the CPI become more expensive. So Eric develops a measure of the I Coli, which unfortunately did not show up in the appendix, because the latter didn't get printed. But that's nonsense, as Dean Baker has also argued.
New needs arise regularly, changing people's tastes.
The changing tastes effect and the I Coli effect cancel out the reasonable part of the Boskin effect. Anyway, both Eric and I have different definitions of what we mean by the cost of living. This includes not only marketed products as part of the story but also non-marketed factors. This lowers someone's standard of living just like as with the story explaining the I Coli. I'd appreciate comments.