Change in inflation calculation

[4MoreYearsOfHell]

Does anybody remember what changes were made a few years ago to the govt.'s calculation that put lower weights on certain items and higher weights on others?

Have these changes in fact resulted in lower inflation numbers?

Thanks in advance...

[tjwmason]

1. I don't know about the specific change

but these things are usually kept under constant watch, and changed quite a bit.

We recently switched our inflation measure from the Retail Prices Index, to the Harmonised Index of Consumer Prices (HICP) renamed as Consumer Price Index (C.P.I.). The main change being that housing costs were removed (house prices in the U.K. are utterly ridiculously high, and have been rising strongly for some time) - so I wonder why that changed.

[aden_nak]

2. Housing costs in many states have skyrocketed.

In the past, say, FOUR YEARS I have watched the cost of purchasing a home in the area where I live double. Literally. Owning a home in this area costs nearly twice (in the case of a condo) and often more than twice (in the case of an actual house) what it did when Clinton was still President. A lot of that has to do with the interest rate, and the simple fact that everyone wants to buy a home now, while they can get an outstandingly low mortgage rate. Demand for homes increased, and thus the price went up far beyond the normal rate of inflation. Of course, that caused assessments and property taxes to increase, and that devalued the worth of the dollar dramatically in the already property-tax-crazy Northern NJ area.