• glimse@lemmy.world
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    5 months ago

    Inflation is apparently a bad indicator of actual cost of living because wages have not kept up with housing and food prices. Wages need to far exceed inflation to catch up to 90s

    • silence7@slrpnk.netOP
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      5 months ago

      Inflation is based on a broad measure of all the things people buy.

      Food and housing are a big part of it.

      • glimse@lemmy.world
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        5 months ago

        Right, but it’s not all of it. Inflation includes a ton of things that don’t affect people in the same capacity Last year inflation was like 7% but grocery prices were up 30%. Housing also far exceeded that, too

        • silence7@slrpnk.netOP
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          5 months ago

          No one thing is all of it because people don’t buy Only One Thing. Food prices did rise a lot, but people don’t buy only food. So the overall cost of living didn’t rise nearly so much.

          • glimse@lemmy.world
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            5 months ago

            Right. But people buy a lot more of One Thing than the Other Thing so when the One Thing is 30% more expensive and the Other Thing is down in price, the average of the two doesn’t tell the whole story

            My expenses are mostly food and housing and I know for millions of people, it’s ONLY food and housing.