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Comment by crisdux | Hacker News Reader

I see significant errors in your thesis. You are using global commodity prices to make claims about US consumer prices and consumer inflation. We have comprehensive data from national food retail that shows strong price inflation. Your insistence in using global commodity prices to disprove consumer inflation concerns is incorrect.

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No, I have used only US commodity prices, except crude and a global energy figure, which is why I also added US kwh prices. All food prices mentioned are US-only figures.

The link you provided in your previous post is about global prices and uses global commodity data. They are certainly not US-only figures. Correcting this error would likely show you that inflation is real.

That article is about world food prices, every single link I give in my comments contain US-only food prices: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29114501

I have never said that inflation is not real, only that this price inflation has merely returned prices to 2011-2014 levels (excepting beef, which is actually at a new high).

Prices are always moving so you can say anything you want by cherrypicking individual categories. That says nothing about inflation.

For this comment to be helpful, you could offer links about goods that you feel better better represent inflation.

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/CPIUFDSL

I'm not saying food prices (even broad baskets like the this) represents inflation. The broad indexes are better for that. But it's not true to say that food prices are at the same level as a decade ago.

I don't think the parent is arguing that inflation isn't real. They are arguing that in spite of inflation we are at 2014 price levels.

I would note that prices are markovian. So if something doubles over night it means something happened to affect that price. All the information about the thing and its history is represented in the current price. Having that price double overnight conveys information that something is happening. It doesn't matter that the thing cost even more 10 years ago.

You have to look at prices on the margin.

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