Some personal anecdotes. I did undergrad 12yrs ago in a university in Southwest. My niece recently enrolled in the same program in the same school - the tuition my sister and her family are planning to pay for her is easily double of what I paid (or May be more if I count her cost of living such as university residence).

My sister in law has diabetes and the insulin prices they pay has also doubled compared to what she used to pay 10yrs ago until she moved to Canada recently.

I have been trying to buy a house for a while now and prices here in the area where I lived and live now have easily more than doubled (facepalm for not buying 5yrs ago). Same thing with rent in any average North American city.

These are the three most basic expenses a family in a first world country is expected to bear. All of them have easily doubled in the last 10yrs.

I am not sure in what way the Fed and their economists are measuring inflation but it sure as hell doesn’t quantify the hardship average families have these days especially when the wages haven’t gone up. I may be the lucky one working in tech but certainly my sister or the SIL’s family are not. Even for me the housing prices have easily outpaced my tech salary growth in the past few years where I am.

I just find the policy makers such as Fed are delusional when they say everything is fine because inflation is averaging 2%. You can come up with whatever number you want, but at the end if it’s disconnected from the economic reality and primary expenses for a family it doesn’t matter because your policies are just not going to affect the middle class as we have been seeing in past decade or so.