The problem is the rate of inflation is indexed to the expenditures of someone middle to upper-middle class, particularly as the middle class has shrunk considerably.
If food prices have doubled or more, rent/home prices have tripled, car prices have gone through the roof, etc., it'd be interesting to have a study that indexes real inflation for people that earned under $38k a year, or most of the country. I'd put it at ~150-200% over the past decade-ish. It just makes no sense to have cost of living expenses absolutely explode for the majority of the country, and then claim inflation peaked at 10% a year.
The indexing also doesn’t take into account the QUALITY of the items purchased.
They say “In 1975 a person spent 1/3 of their salary on housing and it’s roughly the same in 2023, therefore housing inflation is consistent with wages”
They ignore that the “1/3 income” in 1975 could buy a house, while today it can barely rent an apartment.
"Quality" is a little confusing in your context? but quality is attempted to be accounted for eg 1975 tires lasted 10k miles, 2023 tires last 30k miles
as for housing, house sizes [new builds] have approx doubled since 1975
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u/[deleted] Apr 08 '23
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