Article by John Lanchester: “…The other pieces published in this series have human protagonists. This one doesn’t: The main character of this piece is not a person but a number. Like all the facts and numbers cited above, it comes from the federal government. It’s a very important number, which has for a century described economic reality, shaped political debate and determined the fate of presidents: the consumer price index.
The CPI is crucial for multiple reasons, and one of them is not because of what it is but what it represents. The gathering of data exemplifies our ambition for a stable, coherent society. The United States is an Enlightenment project based on the supremacy of reason; on the idea that things can be empirically tested; that there are self-evident truths; that liberty, progress and constitutional government walk arm in arm and together form the recipe for the ideal state. Statistics — numbers created by the state to help it understand itself and ultimately to govern itself — are not some side effect of that project but a central part of what government is and does…(More)”.