[esoterica]

Why are inflation truthers so resistant to spending even the tiniest amount of time learning how inflation is computed instead of repeating nonsensical conspiracy theories that match their ideological priors? Replacing porterhouse with hanger steaks in the basket simply means giving the change in price of hanger steaks a higher weight than the change in price of porterhouse steaks in the basket. It does not mean recording the difference in price between a porterhouse and hanger steak as a decrease in the price index. If porterhouse and hanger steaks both go up by 5% then switching from porterhouse to hanger steaks will not lower inflation, even if hanger steaks are cheaper. And of course that’s the correct way to compute inflation, if people stop using typewriters and start using computers why would you still include typewriters in the consumer basket.

It’s not even true in general that the trend has been switching towards lower quality products. Despite all the ahistoric whining about how much better the old days were, Americans have gotten richer over the past several decades and have been buying bigger cars, dining out instead of eating at home, spending more on travel etc.

[testacpwoek]

> nonsensical conspiracy theories that match their ideological priors

People's lived experiences in many parts of the country don't match what they're being told. If macro trends go one way but microtrends all over the country go the other way, then the macrotrend analysis is functionally meaningless for millions of people. That's not a conspiracy theory, and hand-waving so many people's lived experiences away because it doesn't match YOUR ideological prior is not taking the discussion seriously and fundamentally and possibly wilfully misunderstanding the issue. Insisting that people everywhere saying life is harder than it was pre-pandemic or 10 years ago or whatever are wrong "because the charts say so" is silly.

[itsdrewmiller]

I think people get too hung up on the aggregate numbers which can hide large populations experiencing things differently. Wage growth may have been higher than inflation for some quintiles overall, but for literally millions of people in those quintiles who didn’t job hop and got typical raises or got laid off or whatever, the average experience wasn’t their experience. And when prices are obviously going up, most people will feel like they are falling behind even if they objectively are treading water.

[esoterica]

The official inflation numbers have shown high inflation over the past few years. If you feel like prices have gone up a lot the CPI does not contradict your lived experience in any way.

[gopher_space]

I'd argue that talking about averages at all is arguing in bad faith; there are only a few economic buckets people fit into and they're well defined.

Is there a point of view where not primarily discussing "bucket 1" even makes sense, given everyone's stated intentions?

[lebean]

They must be the 7% of the population not covered by BLS stats when working out the CPI, assuming they're from US, or living in a remote area. Agree that overall, the population has been growing richer for several decades. But what about us folks who subsisted off of GPUs and used cars in 2021-2022? The reality for us is way different.