| If there's a true step change that happens once (and nothing else), inflation looks like: 0% 0% 0% +10% +10% +10% +10% +10% +10% +10% +10% +10% +10% +10% +10% 0% 0% 0% If there's a .8% price increase per month, every month, it looks like: +10% +10% +10% +10% +10% +10% +10% +10% +10% +10% +10% +10% +10% +10% The upside of reporting this way: * Seasonal effects are (mostly) removed The downside: * You have to have a lot of context about surrounding numbers to try and distinguish between these scenarios. * The drop from +10% to 0% is not related proximally at all to the real change. * Even if you are careful in interpretation, information and context are removed. It's not very user friendly or useful as a single number to get an idea about what's happening with prices now. > If we're honestly at the point where this is considered too confusing for the masses, I think I've stopped thinking democracy is a good idea. I have a lot of knowledge about economics and mathematics, and it's frequently confusing for me and difficult to tease out what's really happening with prices from a couple of macroeconomic aggregates. If that makes you give up on democracy, uh, so be it. |