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Comment by jmclnx | Hacker News Reader

Well IIRC, the inflation Numbers exclude Gas Prices because if included, the rate would be much higher.

But the world runs on fuel, so if fuel prices rise, prices rise in all other items. Food has to get to the cities from the farm somehow.

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They do not exclude gas prices. The Consumer Price Index, which is what most people pay attention to and to which this article refers, currently weights gasoline at 3.7% of the basket of goods it tracks.

https://www.bls.gov/cpi/tables/relative-importance/2021.htm

Core CPI, which is what the Fed typically uses, excludes food and energy.

You don't recall correctly. All the standard inflation numbers in the newspapers, economics papers, COL adjustments etc. include gas prices (as well as food prices). You're probably confused with "core inflation", which excludes food and energy prices, or some other special purpose measure. The Bureau of Labor Statistics which computes the official US inflation numbers publishes several of those. Core inflation in the US is pretty much only used by the Federal Reserve, as a crude form of smoothing rapid fluctuations (alternatives could be using trimmed means, or rolling averages).

Krugman explains it all fairly accessibly: https://archive.nytimes.com/krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/0...

> the inflation Numbers exclude Gas Prices

Technically the inflation numbers are posted both ways, including with and without “core energy” so everyone can see the effects either way.

Inflation numbers tend to exclude gas because unlike most other things which tend to slowly rise in price, fuel costs are highly erratic. They are excluded because they add more noise than data.

From 2009 to 2010, the price of gas went up by 25%. From 2014 to 2015 it went down by 25%. Do you think the true rate of inflation is measured by either of those numbers.

That's why we need electric trucks/trains to break the dependence on fuel.

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