theBarneyBus t1_jef4eqk wrote on March 31, 2023 at 3:39 PM

Who says we do?

Often it’s measured with CPI, which measures the price of a pre-set collection of goods and services, representing what an average individual may spend on.

DavidRFZ t1_jef81dj wrote on March 31, 2023 at 4:02 PM

They are talking about “core” inflation.

The truth is that they report both! And they report dozens of splits of price data as well.

Central banks often like core inflation because food and energy prices can be very volatile and susceptible to changes in commodity prices that are not dependent the current state of the economy. Do they need to raise interest rates to slow the economy and bring down inflation is the main source of higher prices is due to OPEC or some drought? They get better data if the more volatile components are subtracted out.

But total inflation still gets the biggest headlines on news reports. If food or energy inflation persistently beats total inflation for long periods of time, there will be pressure to address that in other ways (oil reserves, trade, etc). But it’s still unlikely that the Fed will feel like they should slow the economy to fight it like they would if there was high core inflation.

DeludedRaven OP t1_jef690t wrote on March 31, 2023 at 3:51 PM

I was reading a NYT article and often times on the graphs they have inflation separated from inflation on things like food and energy.

If you combined the two inflation would be something like 12%

But they only have it as 6%.

Potato_Octopi t1_jefs9ax wrote on March 31, 2023 at 6:14 PM

CPI shows all categories that consumers spend money on. You can exclude whatever parts you want to exclude for whatever reason. But it's all in there as a starting point. You can look at actual CPI reports for free you know..