[zetazzed]

There's a phenomenon in which inflation-related posts generate lots of comments or concerns that the CPI methodology is manipulated in some way. If you are interested in learning more about CPI, the methodology is very complex but transparent. You can find documentation here: https://www.bls.gov/cpi/factsheets/ and raw datafiles here: https://www.bls.gov/cpi/data.htm

If you would like to publish your own dataset based purely on changes in price level of chocolate cupcakes, per pound, in cities, you can do so by extracting series APU0000702411 from the raw datafiles.

There is also a short summary on "why averages and an individual's experience of inflation may differ" here: https://www.bls.gov/cpi/factsheets/averages-and-individual-e...

Although it was not my main subfield, I spent a bit of time in grad school with people who are deep in the theory and practice of measuring inflation. It's really really hard, and it's the sort of place where there is a great public desire for a single number, but it's not clear that a single number is meaningful to cover all the most common use cases for inflation. (Use cases include: managing cost of living adjustments, understanding money supply, making investment decisions, making historical comparisons of other time series.) The many variant measures of inflation (core, non-core, etc.) exist to try to serve different use cases more effectively.

[roland35]

Thanks for the important context. We are all exposed to inflation in significantly different ways! I think many people feel helpless because you can make every right decision but still get bulldozed by the economy in ways you can not predict.

[ethbr1]

> because you can make every right decision but still get bulldozed by the economy in ways you can not predict.

There are hedges available to individuals for most common asset classes?

But almost no one I know hedges, beyond basic diversification. (Caveat: I don't have a lot of friends working in professional finance)

[AnimalMuppet]

The one "normal" people actually use is buying a house; this hedges against inflation in the cost of shelter.

We could buy options on oil, wheat, pork bellies, and such, but normal people don't.

[ethbr1]

Specifically, buying a house with an American fixed-rate style mortgage hedges against inflation in terms of interest rates (assuming they rise to counter inflation), value (assuming it rises in tandem with inflation), and leverage (broadly-accessible 1:5 with no call isn't bad!).

But to the broader point, bemoaning helplessness in the face of inflation is false.

There are tons of things essentially everyone could do to hedge inflation, if they were willing to pay the fee to do so.