The central bank is raising rates to fight inflation. No one else seems willing to help

  • @[email protected]
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    1 year ago

    Makes sense. Inflation is trying to determine the value of currency as you can’t just ask how much a dollar is worth. Of course, a dollar is always worth a dollar! Which means nothing as we know a dollar today isn’t worth the same as a dollar yesterday. Thus, CPI becomes the proxy.

    If a luxury item becomes more valuable, then you’re no longer measuring the change in value of the currency, you’re measuring the change in value of that item. It can never be an exact science, but if one thing jumps by 50% when nothing else has, there is extreme confidence that it is not the change in value of the currency that resulted in the change in price and it stands to reason that you would want to eliminate it from the calculation.

    • @[email protected]
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      11 year ago

      It’s not meant to measure inflation. It’s supposed to measure the cost of consumer goods, but instead they say it’s about “overall cost of living” to justify the manipulation.

      • @[email protected]
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        1 year ago

        It’s supposed to measure the cost of consumer goods

        Because consumables are what are frequently purchased to be able to observe inflation taking place.

        It wouldn’t make sense to track houses, for example. People only buy those once, maybe twice in their life. You would have no idea how their perception of the value of the dollar is changing watching that.