[jollyllama]

Ok, since you strawmanned me against bread (which has also increased significantly, at least 5% YOY) , let's consider this: if nobody could afford anything but Doritos, and the price of Doritos went from $4 to $3, then the average basket of goods would go decrease in price >20%. It's a great model if you want to hide the deteriorating quality of life behind effectively meaningless stats. What I don't understand is why so many people feel compelled to defend it so vigorously.

[roywiggins]

It just seems like people have extremely high expectations for what a single number could possibly encompass. It's a single, summary statistic- it's not going to ever be anything more than that. Of course low inflation doesn't mean everything's perfect and prices are just fine. It doesn't say anything about how poor or rich people are, what they can afford, or how wealth is distributed in society.

It is just an (imperfect!) aggregate measure of prices, and it certainly seems to capture something- inflation was low for a long time, then COVID, then it got high, then rates went up, then it went down again. When inflation is very high there aren't many inflation truthers going around insisting that actually, inflation is low; when inflation falls or stays low, there's always people insisting that actually not everything is great. Which: yes! You can have low inflation and all sorts of problems! But having those problems and high inflation is worse.

It's not hiding anything, it's just not rich enough to capture everything you're interested in.