Your assertion that it's "flat" is rather unconvincing after looking at that graph. It's clearly been rising relatively consistently. The dip for covid I think is especially understandable, and it's currently higher than it's ever been.

Maybe your personal expenses are not reflected by the CPI, but you can see for yourself: https://www.bls.gov/cpi/tables/relative-importance/2025.htm

44% housing, 8% medicine, 14% food. I don't see how these number are manipulated to the point of malicious data picking. They also publish their methodology.

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adverbly 15 hours ago | parent [-]

Are you blind?

2019: 83260

2024: 83730

	▲	dahfizz 13 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		It dipped during the covid recession and then recovered to an all time high. Is this your first time looking at an economic chart? It doesn't need to increase every quarter for it to have a very strongly increasing trend.
	▲	bloppe 15 hours ago \| parent \| prev \| next [-]
		If you actually look at the rest of the graph, you'd quickly notice that 2 year dips are entirely normal. The overall trend is consistent. And it's risen over 5% in the last 4 years. Those are the 4 years since ChatGPT.
	▲	demaga 15 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		2018: 77700