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Sometimes inflation is not reflected in a price increase, but in the reduction of quality (e.g. longer waiting times).

There was a thread about it recently: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29062736

This is addressed in the middle of the article. The Shadowstats guy couldn't give any concrete examples. Meanwhile I could say the reverse is also happening - an improvement in "quality" of cars (features and fuel efficiency), homes (square footage), medical treatments. Though I worked in healthcare and there were definitely a lot of unwarranted price hikes - if you paid out of pocket.

As for housing, if you adjust for price per square foot and the monthly cost of a mortgage (and not the purchase price - hardly anyone pays cash for housing), inflation for that category isn't as high as you'd think.

Housing has gone up significantly. Compare what you’d get buying a new build in 2000 to what you get in 2020. $100k for a solid well built home, now $500k for same sq ft, but much lower quality and corners cut at every possible point. I worked I. Construction for a while and my dad for over 30 years. Look up how many new builds have lawsuits for poor quality now vs 20 years ago. Sq ft isn’t a good comparison.

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