The new car price chart says in tiny text "not adjusted for inflation".
At that point, I figured the rest of the article was likely to include similarly glaring methodology problems.
That's not the point. (As I said, the 60" TV stat is equally useless for evaluating inflation.) Cherry-picking a single product like "Campbell's tomato soup" is not a valid methodology for measuring inflation. Not because it's edible or inedible, but because it's too small of a sample size. You can tell any story you like about inflation and the economy by carefully hand-picking a single item.
If the price of an egg doubles, but the price of butter halves, what do we conclude about inflation? Nothing; we need more information.
[1] https://www.ers.usda.gov/data-products/chart-gallery/gallery...
It's not the food that's more expensive; it's the waiter and the cook that are more expensive.
Neither does the price of a can of a particular brand's tomato soup in isolation.
Not sure I agree. I think it leads to fundamentally misunderstanding the economy and an excessive focus on financial measures of the economy where other measures are available.
Although back then you could buy Campbell's Soup Cans (the painting) for just $60,000. In 2022, a famous Warhol painting went for ~$195,000,000.