Change in Consumer Price Index, as measured by normal people and economists
This is probably the dumbest article I’ve read all month.
The meaning of the word “inflation” has changed. It used to mean rising prices; now it means high prices.
“Inflation” has always referred to the same thing: it’s the rate at which prices increase. A positive inflation rate means that prices will increase over time. Going from 9% inflation to 3% inflation doesn’t mean that the prices will drop - it just means that they will rise more slowly. Similarly, if you are riding a bicycle, and your speed changes from 9 mph to 3 mph, you’re still moving forward, you’re just doing so a bit more slowly. In order for the CPI to show a decrease, you would need a negative inflation rate, which is called “deflation”.
The bottom line: Prices are high, therefore inflation is high. Get used to it.
No, the bottom line is that the author is a fucking moron who didn’t take 2 seconds to look up the definition. He trotted out this chart which showed a 3.4% current inflation rate, alongside a 19.3% increase in CPI since 2021 without possessing even the barest comprehension of what it shows. Of course the CPI is going to be much higher now than the inflation rate is. If inflation had been pegged at 3.4% for the entire period, then CPI would be sitting at around a 10% increase from 2021. As it is, it’s at 19.3% because COVID fucked the entire world’s economy, and our inflation rate ballooned to about 9% before tapering back down to the 3.4% it’s at today.
TL;DR: Author is a dummy who wrote about a subject he clearly lacks any comprehension of.
Are you saying that;
Felix Salmon (born 1972) is a British/American financial journalist, formerly of Portfolio Magazine and Euromoney and a former finance blogger for Reuters, where he analyzed economic and occasionally social issues in addition to financial commentary. In April 2014, Salmon left Reuters for a digital role at Fusion.[1][2] In 2018, he joined Axios as chief financial correspondent.[3]
is wrong? /s
Honestly, upon re-reading the article, I think there’s a good chance that I misunderstood what he was saying. On my initial read-through, I read it as him saying that everybody should treat the concepts of “inflation” and “high prices” interchangeably, but I now believe that he might be saying that laypeople are treating the two concepts identically, and politicians should react accordingly.
His concluding paragraph is what made me pop off with my first post; it reads very much like he agrees with this hypothetical idiotic layperson. I think that last bit probably colored my interpretation of the entire article.
When I complain about inflation, I’m complaining because my pay hasn’t risen to match inflation in basically my entire working lifetime. Groceries run about 300-350 where last year or so they were about 250-300. Rent went up 50 in that time (no work was put into the unit- I had to beg my landlord to bring the increase down from 100). Don’t get me started on gas. My check went up about 50 each month to cover all this. So yeah, to me, inflation is effectively equivalent to high, higher and higher, prices.
I vividly remember an earlier round of this nonsense (early 00’s, maybe) there was a newspaper headline declaring that inflation was “in-check/“not a problem/whatever the usual deflection denial was at the time. What I found amusing was a bright red sticker on the newspaper machine. The sticker was informing that the papers (which were previously $0.25) were now $0.75.
Low/no inflation. Check.
