But I guess when you can just readjust the definition and what's included it doesn't matter.
The fed won't be able to raise interest rates without crushing the same people they were lowered to support.
We have not. Your impression of prices doesn't necessarily correlate with actual inflation.
Well I guess wages usually go up for the same kind of job with the same experience when there's considered to be "inflation" and that really hasn't happened. Prices. Yes, they've gone up consistently, haven't we all seen the hard reality of that? And they show no signs of doing anything else. Price indexes used as a proxy measure of inflation may not be capturing that reality. Is it deliberate that the measure is failing to capture the reality? Or is it just poor baskets of goods and services in the index and a lack of will and talent to correct the issue? Anyone arguing about index values and what they mean still has to have a roof over their head quite literally at the end of the day. That has a cost. I haven't noticed the cost going down over any 5 year period. Then look at the cost of eating. Then the captial equipment you need for your job and to be able to pay required bills (some of clothes, vehicle, computing devices). Then look at essential consumables (some of fuel, food, electricity, telecomunications).
I can't see anything other than high inflation and a decrease in disposable income. Note that if you get promoted and get a raise for a new position the reference is how much /that position/ was paid previously not what you were paid fresh out of $whatever.
I don't ever see a measurement that reflects the reality we all see, experience and have to budget in inflation discussions in finance nor do I see a justification of why it's just plain wrong and in so far as these numbers represent anything they represent something else entirely other than the purchasing power of a dollar in your pocket this year as opposed some time in the past.
It may be pandemic influence, but that's the world we live in now.
From USDA (source: https://www.ers.usda.gov/data-products/food-price-outlook/su...):
In 2020, food-at-home prices increased 3.5 percent and food-away-from-home prices increased 3.4 percent. The CPI for all food increased 3.4 percent over this same period. In general, food price inflation in 2020 was much higher than in 2018 (0.4 percent), 2019 (0.9 percent), and the 20-year average (2.0 percent).
The PCE fraction for "food and beverages" (home, away, alcohol) ranges from 13.8% to 17.0%.
That Wiki page also has a nice comparison to the consumer price index (CPI), which was previously used by the US Fed. US Social Security still uses CPI to adjust national pension payments.
Also, you wrote that food prices had more inflation in 2020 compared to other recent years. During the COVID-19 pandemic, many people had cheaper transportation costs, which would offset some or all of this food price inflation.
Obviously the purchase price matters, because the higher prices are, the more money you need to even get in the door with homeownership.
This reads like an oxymoron to anyone who's not a property owner, which is about half the country -- all of whom are in the bottom 90% referred to in the headline.
Should renters not have the opportunity to buy a home?
there should not be societal subsidies for people wanting to buy their home.
If rents are not growing at a rate that's higher than wage growth, then it is stable and thus acceptable. Owning a home is a privilege, not a right. Thus, the CPI calculations correctly only includes rental costs, and not ownership.
Nonsense. Theoretically if wages and rents grew 5% in step together yoy, but most other goods increased at >100% (say houses), your statement implies things would always remain stable. I'd think not...
The real reason CPI is garbage (for measuring total inflation) is because it doesn't track everything, and hence misses the inflation in things that the CPI doesn't track (such as houses). More specifically, it's a measure that only tracks what urban people CAN & typically spend money on. It doesn't track the things which some people have been entirely priced out of and hence don't spend money on (such as home ownership, as well as other assets).