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Comment by IAmWorried | Hacker News Reader

In reality it's a lot higher than 6%. You have to understand that the CPI is utter crap. They have continually adjusted the definition of it over time to make inflation seem not as bad as it actually is. It doesn't include house prices, equity prices, college tuition, etc. And the number generated from the remaining categories is dragged down by cheap software and electronics.

In reality I'd say inflation is closer to 60% than 6%.

The gaslighting is unbelievable. Now they are saying that spending trillions in ridiculous handouts will LOWER inflation!? Are you freaking kidding me?

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Notwithstanding the concerns about inflation, I challenge the notion that helping people feed their families when they're poor, redistributing wealth from the tippity-top to the middle and down, providing more education, and providing more healthcare to the elderly are "ridiculous". "Handout" is a dogwhistle.

My personal opinion is that the US government is mostly incompetent, and its employment structure incentivizes laziness and waste. Any expansion of government into the lives of the people is bound to backfire. The rich would just find a new way to hide their money, the food programs would be taken advantage of, etc. I think we already spend more per student than any other country, and our public education is mostly a joke. But to each their own, I get the sentiment behind these programs.

> My personal opinion is that the US government is mostly incompetent

This is not some natural state of a affairs and more a matter of intentional policy[1] by one (and sometimes both) major parties. Consider the recent attempts to fuck up the USPS.

If you rewind ~60 years you find the US government sending people to the moon on extremely short timelines and building the foundations of the internet.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starve_the_beast

Yeah, the situation is unfortunate. I don't really see a way out though, because government salaries are just not able to compete with the private sector - how is the government going to attract good people?

Let's be honest here - our world is headed towards "Snow Crash". All you can do is hope you land in a good burbclave.

Home values are “included” in the form of rental equivalence, which is widely considered to address a number of flaws with just including house value. And contrary to popular belief, from 1983 when the switch was made until 2007, rental equivalence actually increased CPI compared to the old method.

Why would equities be included in inflation? That doesn’t make sense to me.

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