MISES: Where Is The Inflation? Official CPI Is A Joke

The official CPI is government farce. --- By Mark Thornton of The Mises Institute Critics of the Austrian School of economics have been throwing barbs at Austrians like Robert Murphy because there is very little inflation in the economy.  Of course, these critics are speaking about the mainstream concept of the price level as measured by the Consumer Price Index (i.e., CPI). Let us ignore the problems with the concept of the price level and all the technical problems with CPI. Let us further ignore the fact that this has little to do with the Austrian business cycle theory (ABCT), as the critics would like to suggest. The basic notion that more money, i.e., inflation, causes higher prices, i.e., price inflation, is not a uniquely Austrian view. It is a very old and commonly held view by professional economists and is presented in nearly every textbook that I have examined. This com...