Lol.

that drives out the stores that used to anchor communities

I also used to work in that industry.

Let the fucking immigrants have it. I don't give a shit.

which industry?

keep in mind there are places in the world that do have worse job markets than america

Mostly manual labor, excluding skilled manual labor.

aus is pretty shite and uk is even worse

Absolutely, Kealor.

yes, but it is about the ratio of job market earnings vs cost of living

that is what people miss

our standard of living is also 25-30% higher than those same places with work job prospects

most cost of living estimates ive seen/experienced are higher than they should be

you might have more money in your pocket, but you can buy LESS than you could with less money yesterday

not that that makes the metric bad, just hard to measure

hard for you to measure over the short course of your lifespan

Money wont make you happy

more datapoints, easier to measure

Buying escorts will though

yes, but if you have NO money, you will have a hard time thinking of anything else

We have the CPI, @ManAnimal, but I see more artificial inflation of prices coming from regulations creating uncompetitive markets and taxation, than I do anything else.

I'd love to be poor

well the economy will fluctuate significantly accross lifetimes, so its still quite hard no matter how large your dataset

with respect, the CPI is flawed

That, it is.

Being middle class westerner its easy to take shit for granted

And that's the reason we don't use the CPI often anymore.

the metric doesn't account for the two functions that both contribute to inflation

it only accounts for one

The alternative accounts for inflation.

i disagree

Why couldnt i be born as a black starving lad not knowing if my water has aids

gdp seems to be the best metric so far, and even then its pretty shit

turns out trying to coalesce all of ecconomics into a single number is pretty hard 🤷

with an completely international system and artifcial manipulation of interst rates for decades, we have no clue the ratio actual value vs capital in the system

the best we can measure is liquidity

can do it by outcome but thats also iffy

also depends on your desired outcome

exactly; it assumes that the cash in = cash out

but people die and give cash to family which just sits there for a rainy day

```Over the years, the methodology used to calculate the CPI has undergone numerous revisions. According to the BLS, the changes removed biases that caused the CPI to overstate the inflation rate. The new methodology takes into account changes in the quality of goods and substitution. Substitution, the change in purchases by consumers in response to price changes, changes the relative weighting of the goods in the basket. The overall result tends to be a lower CPI. However, critics view the methodological changes and the switch from a COGI to a COLI as a purposeful manipulation that allows the U.S. government to report a lower CPI.```