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> No way! If everyone could make 100k a year and we could have 2018 prices back...that would damn near be a utopia.

OK, it's good we agree on that.

About inflation: CPI has some aspects that underreport inflation and some that overreport inflation.

This is actually a serious topic for economists, not just for in conspiracy theory nuts. Though you can imagine that the former focus on different aspects than the latter.

I can write a bit more about this from an economics perspective. Some interesting keywords to look into:

  - hedonic adjustment
  - gdp deflator
  - Big Mac index
Slight tangent:

Partially because inflation is such a 'subjective' topic, and requires judgement about how much better or worse the new iPhone is compared to last year's model, my preferred model for central bank policy is nominal gdp (level) targeting instead of inflation targeting.

Nominal GDP is the same as total nominal income, and basically just counts up every dollar everyone in the economy spends/earns. No judgement about the quality of iPhones necessary.

(Alternatively, you could target total gross nominal wages. It's almost the same in practice, because the ratio of total wages / gdp is fairly steady over time in the short run.)



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