Nothing against you in particular, but all the "inflation complainers" were using CPI (not core-CPI) back in January/February to talk about Fed inaction. Now that we're 9 months later, with the Fed hiking rates, suddenly those _SAME PEOPLE_ are now complaining that the Fed rates are hiking too much.

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That being said, I agree with you. Core-CPI exists for a reason, and its a better measure of long-term trends. Oil/food prices change dramatically, while they're important real world measures of cost of living, they change too quickly to be useful. We should typically ignore oil/food prices and focus on other costs of living to try to glean the longer-term trend.

But what's even worse than using "CPI" or "core-CPI", is when people switch between the two to make a focused political argument, rather than an analysis into the state of the economy. Stay consistent damn it.

Yeah, this isn't just a one-time transient price spike that happened months ago. August fuel prices fell a lot (10.6%), a gift! — but core inflation erased all that progress, with a 0.1% month-to-month rise in the CPI overall. Food's up 0.8% in a month. Rent was up 0.7%. Cars were up 0.8%.

We probably can't rely on fuel prices falling 10% again next month.