This is definitely part of the problem, and another issue is quality decrease. Sure, maybe a given item has only increased 80% in price, but perhaps now the quality has decreased so that ultimately you are comparing apples to oranges.
Re:How Far Does $1 from 1999 Go Today?
by littlestymaar on Monday October 16, 2023 @07:53AM
(#37898474)
The fun thing with quality is that statistics agencies are in fact trying to include quality change in their inflation calculation (it's called hedonic adjustment) but AFAIK they only do it for “objective quality” increases (like when CPU clock frequency increases or Disk Size increase), not when actual quality decreases.
I think the big one is the people who produce inflation statistics struggle to capture increases when products change, particularly shrinkflation.
The ONS (Who produce the UK inflation statistics) specifically noted limitations in their methodology because when a particular product (whether that's a particular brand, or specific size) is discontinued, they replace it in their subsequent basket with a similar item for measuring inflation but don't measure the change in inflation from the change in product.
For example a 25p can of peas may be withdrawn from sale by the manufacturer, so the next month ONS would switch to checking the price of a 30p can of peas (the next cheapest can). The fact that people who were buying that can of peas now have to pay 5p more for peas is never captured in inflation.