The two are linked though, because the value of a particular item is not a constant. If the quality of an item changes then you would not expect the price to st

The two are linked though, because the value of a particular item is not a constant. If the quality of an item changes then you would not expect the price to stay the same, but that does not mean inflation is taking place. With that, the price may stay the same but the quality drops, which is functionally the same thing as inflation but the price itself did not change. FWIW the CPI does attempt to measure this: https://www.bls.gov/cpi/quality-adjustment/questions-and-answers.htm https://www.bls.gov/cpi/quality-adjustment/questions-and-ans... > To measure price change accurately, the CPI must be able to distinguish the portion of price change due to this quality change.