A two-income family today is poorer than a one-income family was in the 1970s

[Romulox]

63. Well, for example, they're not arguing we *can afford* new cars as readily. They've decided instead

that we don't want to be able to afford new cars, since used cars are so good!

Nevermind the fact that any rational consumer would rather have a new car than used, all other things held constant.

In this way, government economists have contradicted the clear signals of the market with their own judgment, and all in order to "prove" that shrinking wages aren't so bad. Also, they have changed their mind as to how pollution controls should affect one's perception of inflation, and have therefore made further changes...

Hard to see any level of precision here. It's more politic than "science", that's for certain!

4. Transportation. The annual average difference between the CPI-U and CPI-U-RS transportation components between 1978 and 1998 was near zero, reflecting several changes that roughly offset each other. Specifically, while downward adjustments were made to the CPI-U-RS to incorporate the effects of changes in the quality of used cars and the effects of the geometric-mean formula, net upward adjustments resulted from the deletion from the CPI-U-RS of the index for automobile finance charges and from an upward adjustment based on the backing out of a prior adjustment for changes in quality for mandated pollution controls made to the CPI-U over the period. While annual changes in the CPI-U and CPI-U-RS transportation measures were usually within one-half percent of each other, the CPI-U-RS transportation measure was a full percentage point higher than that of the CPI-U in 1980, a year in which the CPI-U-RS reflected a large upward adjustment to remove the aforesaid previous downward adjustment in the measurement of pollution-related changes in the quality of 1981-model automobiles.