"True inflation may have peaked in late 2022 — at 18% — and still hovers around 8% -MarketWatch.9 Mar 2024"
From where does these inflation figures came from? From Shadowstats.com.
"A number of economists and finance experts have claimed that the Shadowstats CPI is conceptually wrong and that their usage leads to easily disproven and absurd conclusions."
For example, would you buy a 25 inch color television from the 1981 Wards Christmas Catalog (p. 344) at $688.88, or would you buy the Samsung 28 inch LED model that I found on Amazon for $219? Based on the 1981 price, ShadowStats would predict that a 25 inch TV should cost $7,712 today, whereas the CPI would predict that it should cost a mere $1,794. Both indexes wildly overstate TV price inflation even without allowing for quality changes, but the CPI does not miss by nearly as much.
Maybe it is unfair to use something high-tech like a TV, so let’s go low tech. How about a pair of ladies leather gloves, item A on p. 85 of the 1981 Ward’s catalog, for $13. Compare them to a pair I found on Amazon for $10.70. ShadowStats suggests that a pair of leather gloves should cost $145 today. You can repeat this experiment for item after item, and you come to the same conclusion: ShadowStats seriously overstates inflation for items of changing quality just as it does for those of unchanging quality."
