I understand it is a complicated calculation but to me personally, inflation feels much more than that. I have been tracking the price of milk. Around 3 months ago, i was getting a gallon of milk at $2.97, then it went up to 3.07, then 3.25. Yesterday I paid 3.40. That's like 15% gain on something as basic as milk. All numbers from the same store.

One thing I have noted during this inflationary period is that individual stores/chains are gaming pricing much more than I remember before.

For example, your store might be competing for business using the headline price of eggs and making it up on milk and bread. In our city, Whole Foods was the cheapest non-warehouse place to buy eggs for a while. Anecdotally, it looks like one could save a relatively large % on various goods simply by going to a different store, which was not the case a few short years ago.

Relative pricing stability appears to have collapsed, shopping is more intellectually-intensive now.

Because real inflation that people feel is always much worse than the actual number. No one cares if the TVs got cheaper but everyone cares if milk and eggs are more expensive. The average number will still tell you inflation isn’t that bad. Plus variations in local pricing can affect people much more. Dense cities will see a much higher inflation rate than rural areas.

Inflation itself is not a good metric as soon as you leave the avg.

You are on HN, the chance you are part of the american average is very low.

That 15% cost is not relevant if you don't drink milk. Its also a lot less if you are able to save money. That money saved might be for something very specific like one specific car or a house.

The house market, as far as i understand it, is more decoupled from inflation than not. Here in germany a farm costs still 600k and goes up and down based on location and other factors. My money in the bank doesn't has to be inflation neutral, it should be house market neutral for the money i only want to buy a house for.

You can also choose and change your buying power. Instead of the sports car x, you can buy y. Instead of buying the city center house, you can buy the farm outside.

Inflation numbers are a scam, that's all, really.

They apply random multipliers to many products to account for "quality" and "performance", it completely skew the numbers and doesn't reflect the life of most people.

They even give you an example showing how the same car but with 3 more speeds, "smartphone integration" and "keyless entry" should be 3.6% inflation but actually counts as 0.6%

Same for computers, mobiles, etc.

https://www.bls.gov/cpi/quality-adjustment/vehicles.htm

https://www.bls.gov/cpi/factsheets/wireless-telephone-servic...

https://www.bls.gov/cpi/factsheets/personal-computers.htm

Yeah my large bag of whey protein (derived from milk) went up from $35 to $55. Same store and same brand.

The fed tracks this data: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/APU0000709112

milk prices go up and down even outside inflation cycles. how do you know this is inflation. price of milk at your local grocery store in last 3 months is not enough data to attribute causation.

offical inflation numbers are just LIE and wrongg for decades. Now you see it yourself. Via wrong numbers, they steal trillions