Re: The economy - a new era?

[Doug Henwood <dhenwood@xxxxxxxxx>]

Eugene Coyle wrote:

> Alfred Kahn has a new book out -- I'm told, haven't seen it.  He's
> still boasting about the success of airline deregulation.

Long ago - 10, 12 years - I did a piece on the general experience of
dereg. That's when I discovered that the airfares subindex of the CPI
had been increasing far faster than  the overall CPI, mainly because
of quality declines (e.g., tighter purchase restrictions, more
stops). Kahn had been quoting the real fare per seat mile measure,
which had been going down (though no more quickly than it did
pre-dereg). But when I asked him to comment on the behavior of the
CPI component, he refused to believe it.

Doug