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Comment by sairahul82 | Hacker News Reader

Approximately 5% increase and is inline with inflation.

Surprised these types of dollar amounts aren’t pegged to inflation, although if everything were pegged to inflation, what would things cost?

They are. See section (g)(4) of:

https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/26/402

Everything, including the rounding to a multiple of $500, is specified in the law.

you mean the fake inflation measured by some artificial basket not representative of anything?

You're free to come up with your own index with your own basket. The BLS publishes inflation indices at a very granular level, so you don't even need to reverse engineer their data. For maximum shock factor, may I suggest a basket overweighted towards medical care, college tuition, and healthcare[1]?

[1] https://www.aei.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/cpi2020-875x1...

I wondered why you had medical care and healthcare, they seemed redundant, but good on BLS for separating hospital costs and medical costs. That truly is granular.

Do you have a better one you use instead to gauge inflation?

Even if they don't, that's not a valid argument. A metric can be misleading even in the absence of better ones. The parent comment does not deserve the downvotes.

For a balanced take: https://www.investopedia.com/articles/07/consumerpriceindex....

Can’t tell if you’re implying that there is no inflation or if inflation is much higher than 5%?

Usually these folks are of the type who seem to think "well, my rent went up by 10%, therefore inflation cant really be 5%"

And are "these folks" as wrong as you imply? Is there a better indicator of inflation than a dollar's purchasing power?

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