[jxramos]

I wonder if we all tabulated all our expenses in the most fine grained detail and calculated our own personal rates of inflation how meaningful it would be to have percentiles of our population to say things like 50% of citizens experience a personal inflation rate of x.xx%. That would be very fascinating. I'm almost there myself with some web order scraping I've been playing with. It's a lot of work but once I tackle another big vendor of mine I should be able to look at trends for given products over time that I regularly buy.

[gruez]

Sampling bias is going to be a real issue because there's going to be a strong incentive for people who think inflation is high, or is actively experiencing high inflation to participate. Also, if you're only tracking your expenses and not using a fixed basket, the index will end up including lifestyle inflation as well.

[jxramos]

that's an excellent point. Clarify a bit the notion of the fixed basket, I'm thinking mostly of unit prices. I think that could get a bit fuzzy too because of practices like shrinkflation cluttering up the analysis. I think SKUs should actually be tied to fixed things like weight where applicable. I wonder what the rules are surrounding that, basically make it so that if you change the weight of a product you have to issue a new SKU. Might be a messy figure overall but still capable of shedding some insight people would be interested in I'd think.

[gruez]

By "fixed basket" I'm talking about the issue of people getting higher quality goods as their income increase, or buying more or less of something (eg. takeout) as their lifestyle changes.

[jxramos]

yah those instances I would think would break a given "SKU run" if you will, it would have its run in an individual's life under a given time regime. It would phase in and it would phase out.

[jxramos]

I had to lookup some of these points on SKUs, this is good background https://www.shopify.com/retail/what-is-a-sku-number

[Sad90sNerd]

That's a pretty novel concept - you've inspired me : )

[jxramos]

hey that's awesome, what are you planning to do with it. Sounds like something to look forward to. Keep me posted.