Here's a good one I just found as so many here were asking for sources.
Here's a good one I just found as so many here were asking for sources.
My argument isn't with the fact that "inflation" is in fact being used to mean "price increase of goods." My issue is that economists co-opted the word at all and made it functionally useless, especially in isolation as it is often mentioned with no other context of why prices changed.
The use of "inflation" to mean money supply increase goes all the way back to the roman empire.
Someone did a study looking at magazine prices for example. They picked magazines because they almost always had prices printed on the cover and cover images are cataloged. I don't remember the exact numbers, but they found that the actual prices went up by a much higher rate than how the CPI calculated it because they were discounting price increase with a claim that quality got better. Meaning you may have seen the price double over time but the CPI only said it went up by 30% because you got more value from the newer issues.