[Rinum]

CPI includes many loss leaders, e.g. milk and bananas. So is it really fair to benchmark inflation off of the retail prices of those items if the retailer is losing increasingly more money on them while making up for it on other inflated/shrinkflated goods?

[ACow_Adonis]

why wouldn't it be appropriate? whatever the profit/loss on individual retailer's books, actual goods are being transferred for actual monetary prices.

if the system was unsustainable, CPI would adjust just as the prices and products adjusted in the system. which is presumably almost exactly what you'd want out of a measure like CPI.

CPI's job is not to determine whether a situation is profitable or sustainable.