[UncleMeat]

Imagine a more extreme case where we reported inflation over the past 50 years each month. Every month we compute the price of the basket 50 years ago and the price of the basket today and compare. This number would go up when the most recent month had more price increases than the month 601 months ago. It would go down when the situation was reversed. It would be a number, but it would tell you very little useful information.

It is also the case that going extreme in the other direction is ridiculous. Imagine a daily inflation measure. Also nearly useless. "Oh, prices were flat today so everything is fine."

Published inflation numbers in media are usually used to make either the claim "everything is fucked, you should be mad about public policy" or "everything is fine, you should be happy about public policy." To me, this means that the reported should ideally be tied to some cadence that matches public policy. I'm not sure what that cadence is.