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by lxgr
533 days ago
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> what’s it measuring, exactly? Many things, the majority of which are not food. While I also find grocery prices in the US extremely bewildering/concerning (why are they so damn expensive!?), I think it does make some sense to benchmark more than just food. For example, consider a hypothetical world in which grocery prices doubled but cost of housing for some reason halved – would you say that that's high or low inflation? |
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That is grocery inflation and housing deflation. These are just words that mean "the prices are going up" and "the prices are going down" respectively. There's no spiritual or metaphysical meaning behind them, and they don't say anything about the causes of prices going up or down. One can argue why the prices are changing, and maybe some or all of the answer is money supply, but one cannot argue if prices are up "because of inflation" or not -- if prices are up, there is inflation, regardless of the "root" (scare quotes because it's unclear that there can be such a thing as a root cause in something as complex as the global price system, which is a strange loop if there ever was one) cause.