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Comment by boredumb | Hacker News Reader

Inflation in the US as of 2023 is more like a choose-your-own-adventure than anything else. Depending on the channel or URL you tune into you and others just like you can extrapolate out corporate greed, federal reserve policy, federal government policy, tax cuts, tax hikes, covid restrictions caused it, covid restrictions actually helped, PPE loans, biden, trump, xi, putin, zelensky.

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> Inflation in the US as of 2023 is more like a choose-your-own-adventure than anything else. Depending on the channel or URL you tune into you and others just like you can extrapolate out […]

Almost like modern economies are complicated with many feedback loops and a lot of interconnectedness between different factors that interact in possibly non-linear ways.

Or you can just buy gold. /s

That's my point. It's complicated and measured in ways that the actual inflation numbers you hear from major media outlets are basically useless for gauging inflation and only seem to be used to further agendas.

That's what the sub-components are for. StatCan just released numbers for Canada and you can what is driving things up and down:

* https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Fzoi9AUagAAzW_G?format=png&name=...

* https://twitter.com/trevortombe/status/1673688862886080512

"You can then ask why is X or Y doing what it is?"

Don’t forget aging demographics increasing demand while reducing supply of able bodies, with the added bonus of driving unemployment down

It really is a Rorschach isn’t it? :)

Ideally you would only reference NBER economic reports, however those come out years after the fact.

You missed Biden.

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