Over the long term, in a society where technology has been improving at the pace that ours has, something like the CPI is almost forced to overstate inflation.

Over the long term, in a society where technology has been improving at the pace that ours has, something like the CPI is almost forced to overstate inflation. Things like my iPhone weren't available at any price 10 years ago, and certainly had such a useful device been available, it would have cost several times what it does today. But you have to put it in the CPI basket as telecommunications or what have you, and it's being compared to an old AT&T Princess. Similar issues crop up in industry after industry, and are basically impossible to "normalize" into something objective. The best you can do if you're worried about making sure folks on COLA-adjusted assistance don't starve is weight for the essentials (bread, milk, gasoline, housing square footage). But now you're not capturing huge swaths of quality of life improvements.