4 ms·

"Food prices are not properly accounted for in inflation measures" There, fixed the headline.

• EGreg 6y ago
  No, one component of “inflation” (defined as the rise in the consumer price index) rises much faster than the others.
  • makomk 6y ago
    It's entirely possible that all the things in the consumer price index and other measures of inflation rise overall faster than the headline inflation measures - they do some weird things with weighting and so-called hedonistic adjustments which means that it's probably literally impossible for someone to experience inflation that low. For example, they compensate for the supposed increase in values from, say, flash drives increasing in size, computers in speed, and TVs in size in a way that doesn't make sense if you can't even save money by buying a smaller flash drive or slower computer, or you need a faster PC to do the same things, or if the 32 inch TVs have the same resolution, sound and picture quality as a 24 inch of yesteryear and you have to go up to 40-50 inches to get something actually equivalent in quality to a 32 inch TV from years ago. For a while, one of the key US inflation measures even assumed that if people's medication went up in price massively they'd substitute it for whatever medicine hadn't exploded in price even if it was for some completely different condition! And I'm not convinced that, even for things which genuinely are substitutable like different kinds of food, it's actually possible over the long term to substitute your spending in a way that matches up with official inflation figures.