1900 to 2024 for the US.

For Iran, China, USSR, for example, you had to back in estimates from observable benchmark information uncontaminated by dictatorships. You didn't have to do that with the US.

The US standard has been to document and standardize approaches -- and identify when things are changed and why. This was not common across all economies. It does give us several similar streams, e.g several versions of unemployment.

its a measurement process of a large and complicated system. some of the things you cite are actually signs that the system was actually kind of working. CPI is a basket of indicators, there is no way that's ever going to capture the whole picture.

the best we can ask for is apolitical appointees whose goal is to improve the process and transparency about how the data was collected, publication of the raw numbers, and publication of the methodology used to synthesize it.

my understanding that the appointment process has been corrupted, but do we know to what degree transparency has?