> This is the result of policy decisions with well-understood outcomes. All the things you mentioned, certainly, but there's a more direct, more obvious route

> This is the result of policy decisions with well-understood outcomes. All the things you mentioned, certainly, but there's a more direct, more obvious route for policy to control inflation. It is (at least in Australia) one of several artificial measures generated based on the weighted changes in pricing of a "basket of goods" selected by the Australian Bureau of Statistics, the specifics of which is altered unilaterally, somewhat regularly and relatively opaquely (the info is public but you have to go digging and general discussions tend to ignore it and just say "inflation" or "the CPI". So inflation is literally defined by these decisions. And while I'm sure the majority are well-meaning, there are still so many very plausible, very easily defendable ways to influence the outcome. eg. iirc around 2021 they decided to count capital gains on housing against the CPI "because families' net worth was increasing" despite the fact that a whole bunch of people were struggling to buy groceries. Such an accountant-ish thing to do.