The BLS numbers are not as good as you seem to think, and many people are aware of their flaws. For example, the Boskin Commission (in 1996) concluded that inflation was overstated by about 1.3%/year (up to 1996, which includes about 16 years of the period you are interested in).
Regardless of your argumentum ad populum, do you disagree with my claim that a correct measure of inflation should not use an expanding basket of goods? If so, please explain why we should care about this quantity:
BLS-adjusted wage = (nominal wage) x (cost of smaller basket A in 1980) / (cost of bigger basket B in 2010)
So did you cancel your subscription to the Economist and the WSJ? Because they cite the BLS inflation numbers all the time, like multiple times per week.
BLS inflation numbers get cited all the time. That doesn't mean they actually show what [random pundit X] thinks they show. In particular, they don't support the claim that people have less purchasing power now than they did 30 years ago. They don't directly measure purchasing power; "real wages" is a misnomer, and a decrease in "real wages" doesn't necessarily correspond to "starving" the consumers as you claimed in an ancestor post.
When asked to directly measure purchasing power, why do you instead go for the "appeal to authority" regarding an indirect and clearly flawed method? Why not try to actually directly answer the question at hand: name one good or service that is less available now than it was 20-30 years ago, thereby establishing an actual decrease in purchasing power for the consumers you claim are being "starved".
Look, if it's the BLS with their 70 year history vs yummyfajita's basket of goods he'll throw together to try and prove the point, I'll stick with the BLS. Nothing against Mr. fajitas, he's a smart guy. But I could throw together an index that was heavy on healthcare and gasoline costs, maybe factor in average debt level and show the opposite.
I didn't throw together a basket of goods, because I think it's true for virtually any constant basket of goods. Feel free to construct your index which is heavy on healthcare and gasoline - I think you'll fail.
Gasoline won't help you much, wages have kept up with gas prices [1]. I don't see much reason to believe a basket of 1980's health care goods would help you either. All the drugs would be out of patent (and vastly cheaper), among other things. Feel free to prove me wrong.
The particular basket you pick just doesn't matter, because I don't think there is a single good we can afford less of today than we could in 1980. We drive more cars, live in bigger houses, we wat more food, consume more medicine, and we have more appliances. Feel free to cherrypick a basket and prove me wrong.
Look, CPI is a fine measure for what it is aimed at. But it is not designed to calculate real wages in the manner you seem to want it to. No inflation measure with a variable basket of goods could possibly do that.
If you think I'm wrong, please post a basket of goods which has inflated. Or feel free to go back to appealing to authorities who are misusing measures created by other authorities for a different purpose.
[2] People do consume less of some things, e.g. land line telephone service and television. But that's only because they have become rich enough to afford more attractive alternatives, e.g. cell phones and video games.
The question at hand is "how do we measure whether consumers have less purchasing power than before?"
It doesn't matter how long the BLS or yummyfajitas have been taking measurements. The only thing that matters is whether the measurement is accurately capturing what we want it to capture, and whether it shows that real ability to purchase stuff has gone up or down. The BLS measurement doesn't accurately measure purchasing power; it's misleading to act as though it does. A measure that takes the same items in 1980 and 2010 and compares wages to total price would be far better, and I contend that you would have to work very hard to create such a measure that shows what you claim.
My challenge to you: come up with the measure based on your actual spending habits. Compare your wage to that of someone in a comparable socioeconomic position 30 years ago, and calculate how much it would've cost to maintain an equivalent lifestyle 30 years ago. Unless you have very, very unusual spending habits, you'll find that your purchasing power is much higher now than someone in the same relative position in the 1980s.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boskin_Commission
Regardless of your argumentum ad populum, do you disagree with my claim that a correct measure of inflation should not use an expanding basket of goods? If so, please explain why we should care about this quantity: