Is it reasonable to trust the data? I understand why anyone would maintain a level of skepticism across the board regarding the reliability of data claiming to provide meaningful insights into the cost of living globally.
In this part of the world where I live and work, key costs like grocery prices and housing costs are severely burdening the average wage earners. In other words, inflation is a huge issue for everyone. There are other issues which continue to divide the country. Unsurprisingly, Ivory Tower economists and certain elected politicians persist in their blissful ignorance of these challenges.
This article from Stephanie Stamm and Jesse Newman for The Wall Street Journal is another good read especially for the young people looking to plan their early retirement.
Here is a section:
In grocery stores, a Benjamin just isn’t what it used to be.
The pace of food inflation in supermarkets has slowed sharply over the past year, returning to levels that were more typical before the pandemic. But groceries are still much more expensive than in years past, meaning $100 doesn’t go as nearly as far as it once did.
Grocery prices were up +1% in February versus a year earlier, Labor Department data show. They increased +10.2% in February 2023 compared with a year earlier, and +1.2% in February 2019.
Prices for hundreds of grocery items have increased more than +50% since 2019 as food companies raised their prices. Executives have said that higher prices were needed to offset their own rising costs for ingredients, transportation and labor. Some U.S. lawmakers and the Biden administration have criticized food companies for using tactics such as shrinkflation, in which companies shrink their products but not their prices.
Inflation-weary consumers have pushed back, and food makers have begun offering more deals or reducing the prices of goods such as coffee and margarine.
Consumers have also become creative to cope with a stretch of record food inflation. Sharon Faelten, a 74-year-old retiree from Underhill, Vt., said that instead of a wallet-punishing ordeal, she tries to think of trips to the store like procurement raids depicted in apocalyptic novels, where the goal is to stock her fridge, freezer and pantry for as little money as possible.
“Chicken is always on sale somewhere,” Faelten said. She has managed to keep her grocery bills to prepandemic levels, she said, but it takes a lot of work.