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Rent doesn’t seem to have gotten cheaper. Food too. And education and health care. How exactly is inflation at record lows, because the BLS said so?
by isoskeles 7y ago
Rent doesn’t seem to have gotten cheaper. Food too. And education and health care. How exactly is inflation at record lows, because the BLS said so?
- AnthonyMouse 7y agoThose things cost more relative to other things. Inflation is everything costs more, specifically including wages, because dollars aren't worth as much. The reason e.g. rents are high is that there is high demand for housing in cities and zoning restricts new construction. That's not inflation.
- rawbeef 7y agoOh boy. Tin foil hats here we come. Look up consumer price index. You can do this yourself if you really want, but I'm guessing you don't churn your own butter for the same reason you wouldn't want to do this: Go to the super market, pick out a bunch of items, average the cost of them and chart that average over time. There is no conspiracy here. Measuring inflation is very straight forward.
- asdfadsfgfdda 7y agoMeasuring inflation is not straight forward. How do you calculate inflation of completely new products, like smartphones? How do you measure inflation on a car that is superior in every attribute (fuel economy, safety, reliability) to a car of 10 years ago? How do you measure inflation on non-rival goods, like access to wikipedia?
- cdiddy2 7y agoYes there is conspiracy here. We have changed the way we measure inflation over the years. It completely changed how we count housing costs and technology. "if we calculated inflation today the same way we did during Carter’sadministration, CPI would be closer to 10% rather than the 1.5% calculated as of 12/31/10 by the government." https://www.cornerstonewm.com/downloads/measuring-inflation.pdf https://www.cornerstonewm.com/downloads/measuring-inflation....