[kennethh]

It is not a very good argument that their subscription service has not increased in price in 17 years. Many online services have kept their price but the number of users have increased a lot. The important thing about ShadowStats is that they show different methods of calculation price inflation.

Calculating inflation from prices is not easy since people tend to consume more chicken or pork of beef is getting more expensive. If you still only consume beef the price index do not show your personal reality, and this reality is different for all people. In aggregate everything that is produced get consumed over time, so the total prices paid is always connected to the total amount of money available.

[rssoconnor]

The "take the BLS numbers and add 3.5%" methodology isn't a real methodology.

And regardless of their methodology, the numbers given by ShadowStats are just manifestly wrong. You can calculate the implied cumulative effective price increase and over the last 17 years and it is just observationally wrong for anyone who has lived for the last 17 years. It is not even close.