Boskin Commission

The Boskin Commission, formally the Advisory Commission to Study the Consumer Price Index, was established in 1995 by the U.S. Senate, with the ostensible mandate to examine the accuracy of the Consumer Price Index (CPI), which measures inflation. Chaired by economist Michael Boskin, the commission concluded in its 1996 report that the CPI overstated inflation by about 1.1 percentage points annually.

I need a president who understands why the CPI was broken by two senators named Moynihan and Packwood in the mid 1990s, using five academics, including Zvi Griliches, Dale Jorgensen, Ellen [Dulberger], Robert Gordon, and Michael Boskin. Who the hell is the Boskin Commission? Why are we not revisiting chained indices, seasonal adjustments, looped preferences, unstable preference? Trillions of dollars go back and forth over this. I've been trying to talk about this since the 1990s. You can't talk to anyone about the fact that the CPI was used to raise taxes and slash benefits, because tax brackets are indexed to it, and Social Security and Medicare indexed. I mean, you know, it's like a perfect crime. You're stealing trillions of dollars. Everybody's experiencing higher prices. It's not being reflected in the gauge. And you can't get into the game to have the conversation because anyone who's an expert is compromised.

- Eric Weinstein, Nov 3, 2024, on The Winston Marshall Show #033

You have a small number of economists who, in the mid 90s, became directed by Bob packwood and Daniel Moynahan to find an overstatement of the CPI, because tax brackets were indexed, and entitlement benefits, social security, medicare were indexed. And so what they found is if you could knock down the measurement of the CPI, you could raise taxes and slash benefits. And they backed out that 1.1% overstatement, if corrected, would lead to a trillion dollar savings over 10 years. And they actually broke into two groups to come up with two separate numbers that would add together to 1.1, which to me is academic malpractice. That is, they started with the target—and this is according to one of their own members of this Boskin Commission, Professor Gordon, who talked about the fact that "somehow" the two groups came up with the two numbers, which, when added together, gave Dale Jorgensen, a Harvard professor of economics, his 1.1% overstatement. And that's what they went with. Now, to me, that's like saying, "we need to find an error in all the temperature gauges so that we can come up with different targets because global warming is a problem." You're not allowed to touch the temperature gauges, for God's sakes!

- Eric Weinstein, Dec 16, 2019, on The Portal Ep. 16: Tyler Cowen - The Revolution Will Not Be Marginalized

Let me explain the previous slide of Boskin Commissioner Prof. Robert Gordon in plain English.

Harvard’s Samuel W. Morris Professor Dale Jorgenson told the Boskin Commission (created by the senators) that to shave an even one TRiLLION dollars ($1,000,000,000,000) off of social security payments they would merely need to justify an oddly specific 1.1% overstatement in the consumer price index.

Which they did. “Somehow”.

“Somehow” involved destroying anyone who said “CPI doesn’t work like that at all! It’s not a number you can dial to get consequences you like.”

- Eric Weinstein April 15, 2025, on X