> Note that the government has huge incentives to downplay the inflation rate. Over the time period of the graph, the price of gold went up by about 100x; I wou

> Note that the government has huge incentives to downplay the inflation rate. Over the time period of the graph, the price of gold went up by about 100x; I would consider that a more accurate estimate of inflation than the 18x number implied by the chart. The CPI is one of the most studied and examined statistics that the government releases. Everyone from hyper-capitalist financial traders to leftist unions folks (because of CoL contract provisions) examine in and none of these folks who have a vested interested in calling out fraud have stepped forward. There have been numerous peer-reviewed examinations about it, including open source code: * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MIT_Billion_Prices_project https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MIT_Billion_Prices_project There are disagreements about the "best" way to measure certain things (e.g., owner-occupied housing), but for the published methodology there is no cooking of the books that anyone without a tinfoil hat can find. A recent profile of how the BLS does things: * https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/interactive/2024/john-lanchester-consumer-price-index-who-is-government/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/interactive/2024/joh... * http://archive.is/https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/interactive/2024/john-lanchester-consumer-price-index-who-is-government/ http://archive.is/https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/in... (Included as a chapter in the recent Michael Lewis (of Big Short fame) book Who Is The Government?) And regarding gold specifically, there have been periods (that stretch over decade(s)) where gold has been flat, especially in inflation-adjust terms: * https://graphics.thomsonreuters.com/11/07/CMD_GLDNFLT0711_VF.html https://graphics.thomsonreuters.com/11/07/CMD_GLDNFLT0711_VF... The fact that it just happened to pop up over the last 2-3 years is recently bias. Your returns would have been highly dependent on when you got in for each (use slider): * https://www.macrotrends.net/2608/gold-price-vs-stock-market-100-year-chart https://www.macrotrends.net/2608/gold-price-vs-stock-market-...