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So, as usual I'm somewhat limited in what I can back up with my own to eyes from where I sit, but what do you make of gimmicks like this?
Well, I'll just say that if people see their bills go 3x you're going to have a hard time convincing them inflation is fine even if by some statistical vodoo you can get the numbers to show 3%.
Since I'm not American my only two options are to go with the official numbers or give some credence to other people's subjective reports. At the end of the day this is a purely intellectual exercise for me.
I think you're making a mistake by saying this is political. Haven't surveys been showing pretty handy majorities concerned about inflation?
https://www.reuters.com/graphics/USA-ECONOMY/SENTIMENT-POLITICS/gkvlgqjzxpb/
Consumer sentiment being politically motivated is, itself, at this point a well measured statistic. ((Sorry for the awful graph but I think you can figure it out))
Maybe I'm mentally Ill, but that graph looks perfectly readable to me.
Anyway you'll notice that even in these polarized times, and with a metric as nebulous as "sentiment" you still get something coherent. The election times flips notwithstanding, the for each party, and the independents, are moving in the same direction at the same time. You don't get Democrats saying everything is getting better over the years as Republicans are saying everything is getting worse, nor do you get each side maxing out their respective values.
Inflation is no different. Yes, fewer Democrats think it's a problem than Republicans, but that still leaves us with 52% Democrats thinking it's a "very big" problem. Maybe they got psy-opped by TikTok, maybe 3% is already a very big problem for a lot of people... Or maybe, just maybe, the 3% number is not representative of the increases hitting people each month.
Listen I'll be the first one in line to say the CPI is fake and gay, a government chimera imagining what the average American needs to buy every month while ignoring the actual experience of oneself or one's friends trying to buy things.
But this is an area where we have a very clear partisan valence to interpretations of economic data. And repeatedly I've had the experience on this very forum of people making loud proclamations of how bad inflation is, with prices listed, that are literally false. My interlocutor will claim eggs are $11/doz, that gas prices are higher, that chicken is $8/lb. I don’t know how else to interpret that experience.
You'll have to point me to where I denied this is biased along partisan lines. I'm saying that even taking the bias into account, you'll still get results implying a number quite a bit larger than 3%.
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