Dear John: The “official” inflation rate is nonsense. Anyone who goes to the market can see that a 30 percent to 40 percent rise seems more like it. What screwball methodology is used to concoct this charade? J.B.

Dear J.B.: Methodologies – plural. There are a number of ways these numbers get fudged.

The government actually says food inflation between last year and this year is 4.3 percent. And it says energy is up 17 percent, which may be closer to the truth but still way off.

How’s this done?

The government seems to believe it can report the prices of goods and services any way it wishes just as long as it can get a credible academic to support its charade.

One of my favorites is something called geometric weighting, which is probably being used to tame the inflation numbers.

It’s quite simple. If something goes up enough in price to make it unaffordable, then people will buy a substitute. And since they aren’t buying the original item anymore that means there really wasn’t a price increase to begin with.

Take steak as an example. Let’s say a pound of filet mignon goes up by $3. People will stop buying that cut of meat and will settle for burgers. And since they are switching the kind of meat they are purchasing, then there really was no filet-mignon inflation.

Of course, carried to its extreme this would mean that once prices rise so much as to make everything unaffordable we will have reached the perfect state of non-inflation. Instead of buying things that have risen in price people will just starve.

Washington, of course, wants inflation to look lower. First, because it can then pay Social Security recipients and others less for their annual cost-of-living increases. But, secondly, lower inflation makes the economy look like it is growing more than it really is.

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