Because to me, it seems impossible to not notice the inflation in food prices over the past year. It hasn't really changed my life, but it's very noticable that prices are going up.
I know this is "privilege", but it's emphasizing my point, which is that these top AI engineers making 3-10x as much as me certainly aren't worrying about inflation.
I earn significantly less than a FAANG employee, and I agree with GP. From groceries alone, I'd never have known we had inflation. The only increase in prices that I did notice on my own is that eating out has gotten more expensive. And that's because many meals I would have for under $10 have magically hit $10+ - a notable boundary point, and the price point where I start thinking twice about "convenience" lunches.
You can see more here: https://www.bls.gov/news.release/cpi.t01.htm
I am fairly senior and make tons of money. The ratio of income to my annual grocery bill is stupid. Also, I eat mostly salads and meat is not my most common protein source. Groceries could go up 10x and fluctuation in my investments would still grossly dwarf .
But one of my earliest memories is my mother crying at the ATM because the checking account was over-drawn and there was no food at home (by the time I was in high school we were much better off than most, but the treatment effect stuck -- my younger sibling and I think about money in very different ways. Crazy what a $2K savings buffer can do). I then spent a good part of my early adult life stressing about affording food & choosing between rent and desired groceries.
I still stress over every single thing that goes in the grocery basket, for absolutely not rational reason. In particular, I don't stress about e.g. restaurant bills. Why? Because the times in my life when food was scarce do not overlap with times I was in restaurants as a patron.
The grocery store in particular is a source of psychological terror for many Americans at one point or another in their lives, and those memories are visceral.
It's not on the level of food insecurity, but I see a ton of comments in this thread by people who obviously are too young to remember the dot-com bust of 2001.
I was just out of school in 1999 and can vividly recall one of the senior engineers warning me, with mortal seriousness in his eyes, "it isn't always like this". I also remember having absolutely no fucking clue what he was talking about, except on the most superficial level. He was then just about the age that I am now.
Winter is coming.