interesting but not dense history and current status of inflation measures

Inflation is hard to measure ofc. They try to account for changes in quality with a regression model but this seems tricky. General consensus at this point on a couple of reasonable methods for everything though

personal consumption expenditures (PCE) is what the fed actually uses. CPI is used to adjust social security, tax brackets, and other stuff though

• PCE is broader, includes stuff like healthcare paid for by heath insurance on your behalf
• PCE has been lower than CPI bc housing costs have been rising rapidly and they're 33% of CPI vs 15% of PCE

"Core inflation" seems dumb? Excludes food and energy, two very real things with pretty inelastic demand

Rebalancing weightings for what people buy every two years is maybe too slow Oh nice, they're doing it every year now

BLS seems pretty on top of doing a good job here and incorporating new ideas