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Comment by ahmedfromtunis | Hacker News Reader

Any price comparison over time should include inflation.

Otherwise this is akin to comparing speed of 2 objects in a relativistic setting without stating the frame of reference.

Side note: I don't know why, but the existence of a "cite this" section on this page made me sad.

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This site is showing you inflation!

The relevant comparison would be your individual wages.

Showing the CPI next to these price increases wouldn’t hurt. If anything, it shows the problem with a single measure of inflation.

CPI is based on prices such as these, so it provides no useful signal.

Are you saying that a single data point contains the same amount of information as a dataset of hundreds if not thousands of entries from across the economy?

Completely wrong. CPI is based on the prices of all things people buy. Comparing inflation in one sector to inflation in the whole economy is a very useful signal.

Agreed, $95.91 a month in 2021-03 is $120.91 in July 2026 dollars. The current cost is $154.41, so it grew $33.50 a month after accounting for inflation.

I am probably an outlier but I don't honestly know how much someone can watch on theses services to be always subscribed, I subscribe to watch something and unsubscribe after a month or two because that's when I'm well and done. My husband had some free three months of Disney+ and I don't think either of us watched a single thing on there in that three months. Tubi has better content than Disney+.

This IS inflation.

That's like saying your snow report for skiing should be adjusted for weather.

No, it's like making a snow report for a handful of skiing areas in a small geographical area (e.g. Sierras) and then contextualizing it against the snow report for all skiing areas in the broader region (e.g. Western US).

Inflation isn't accurate variable because salaries of many people are lagging behind inflation.

I think the point is that inflation numbers are bs. The official number from 2021 to today is 23%. But we didn't see prices only 23%. A restaurant mean didn't go from $20 to $25. It easily went up 50% or more.

Inflation isn't some force of nature that needs to be accounted for like the curvature of the earth.

I assume you got that > 50% number from actual CPI data and not just vibes, right?

When the data and the anecdotes disagree, the anecdotes are usually right.

There's literally trillions at stake for under-reporting these numbers. A lot of government benefits are tied to this not to mention political ramifications of high inflation. So I'll go with vibes (i.e. experienced reality) over some government re-balanced basket formula

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