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by rllearneratwork 1879 days ago
This. peoples see that the prices of a dozen of eggs or meals don't go up and say: "No inflation! See!". All this while all assets are getting more expensive, the prices of housing, healthcare, education, retirement and even top of the line electronics (flagship iPhone price now vs 10 years ago) are getting more expensive.
1 comments

But entry-point Xiaomi and Huawei phones are much cheaper than 10 years ago. How do you explain that? That feels like deflation. Using the Apple iPhone as a proxy of inflation felt by middle class (and below) is dubious. That product is essentially a Veblen good (Wiki says: "a type of luxury good for which the demand for a good increases as the price increases, in apparent contradiction of the law of demand"). Look at the price of desktop computers, laptops, Raspberry Pi-equivalents, and flat-screen TVs: It is shocking how much prices have fallen (vis-a-vis price/performance) over the last 10 years.

"The price of eggs." What next: Will you talk about low interest rates "punishes savers"? What portion of wages do highly developed countries spend on food? (Exclude [South] Korea and Japan, which are extreme outliers.) The answer: Vanishingly small amounts. And, it continues to fall each decade.

"[P]rices of housing, healthcare, education, retirement" -- is this true in socialist market economies in Continental Europe, like Germany, France, Italy, Austria, Switzerland, Netherlands, Belgium, Spain, Portugal, Sweden, Finland, Denmark? No, it is not. I will admit: Life for middle class (and below) in the UK is surely worse in the last decade for all of the above that you mention.