The Lippard Blog: Home values and CPI

Sunday, September 18, 2005

Home values and CPI

Don Boudreaux, chairman of the George Mason University Department of Economics, weighs in - tangentially - on the housing bubble with this entry in his blog at www.cafehayek.com.

5 comments:

R. Chapman said...: I have a challenge for the Lippard Blog:

To help increase the content and quality of our blogs, would you be interested in engaging in a dialogue on various issues in philosophy of religion?

I propose to have mini-debates of 200 words or less on topics like "Is the Universe Designed" "Does the Soul Exist" "What Caused the Universe" and other issues.

One of us could start with an opening statement, followed by a reply by the other, and a final statement by the opener. Each contribution just being 200 words.

We could alternate who starts the various mini-debates, so no one gets the overall advantage in the dialogues as a whole.

Are you guys interested?; September 19, 2005 at 6:53 PM
Lippard said...: Tom:

I'm rather overcommitted, time-wise, and question how much value there would be with the 200 word limit. My counter-suggestion is that we each respond as appropriate to comments posted on our own blogs, as we see fit. I believe you have a lot of catching up to do...

Alternatively, there is a formal debates forum at the Internet Infidels Discussion Boards (http://www.iidb.org).; September 19, 2005 at 8:36 PM
Lippard said...: BTW, on the topic at hand, the issues regarding CPI are discussed frequently at thehousingbubble2.blogspot.com (Ben Jones' blog). I don't think the CPI issues support an argument that there's not a housing bubble.; September 19, 2005 at 8:39 PM
Einzige said...: Did you get the impression from Don B's comments that he would argue that there isn't a bubble?; September 20, 2005 at 2:01 AM
Lippard said...: He's arguing that CPI overestimates inflation because of how it measures home values, and that real GDP increases have therefore been reflected in the increase in home values. I guess that doesn't need to translate into an argument that there is no housing bubble, but I first took it that he was saying that there are rational reasons for the increase in home values.; September 20, 2005 at 7:57 PM