I treated myself to a medium frozen yogurt yesterday, no toppings, after carrying a sheet of peg board about a mile. It was $8 after tip. Maybe that's small tourist town price rather than inflation, but all the restaurants in the area definitely jacked prices up 50% over the last two years.

I had to carry the peg board from the in-town hardware store because it wouldn't fit in my Mustang. A Ford Mustang has the same sticker price as it did when I bought mine 10 years ago. So, if there's inflation, Mustangs have comparatively gotten cheaper.

The peg board itself was $18 for a 4'x4' sheet. I haven't looked it up, but I suspect I could have paid 4x cheaper by area by buying full sheets at Home Depot. I would have paid the difference in transportation costs just buying the one sheet, though.

>>A Ford Mustang has the same sticker price as it did when I bought mine 10 years ago. So, if there's inflation, Mustangs have comparatively gotten cheaper.

I am not sure where you are getting your prices, in 2011 Base Mustang v6 coupe sticker was $22,145. Adjusted for CPI to official 2021 dollars that would be $26,076.

Base model 2021 Mustang v6 Coupe starts at 27,155, which is about 4% more than CPI indicated would be accounted for by official inflation

The difference is even more if we look at the GT500, which in 2011 was $53,645 which in official 2021 dollars would be $63,169 yet the 2021 GT500 has a sticker price starting at $72,900 a full 13% higher than inflation.

So please tell me where you are getting a 2021 Ford Mustang new for the EXACT same price as one would have paid in 2011??? Or you got massively ripped off 10 years ago... My current vehicle today has book value of about $1,500 MORE than when I bought it used 3 years ago (about a 1% increase in value), late model cars do not normally go UP in value as they age, but mine has in the last year or so....

as to the Peg Board, in my area right now a 4x8 sheet of Peg Board @ the local home depot is $25.. Definitely not $5 as you seem to believe, lumber prices (and peg board is in that) is up somewhere around 400% this year as there are MASSIVE shortages for building supplies of all types but especially wood based products

I think you're possibly reading more into my statements than there was. No need to be so confrontational.

Retail price for the V6 premium trim Mustang I bought was about $26000 retail. The modern equivalent I would say is a V4 with basic trim, because the 2021 base model comes with considerably more technology than the 2011 premium. The only practical difference is leather vs. cloth seats. The retail price for that car is about 27000. So yeah, I think you can get the roughly the same amount of Mustang today for the same price 10 years ago.

If you look at the V4 premium, then yeah it's about 20% more expensive than the base model which tracks estimated inflation. You're getting considerably more technology than the premium model a decade ago, though. It's a better car. Maybe not 20% better though.

I'm laughing about the peg board prices. You're calling me out with numbers, but it seems like you're ignoring the dimensions, and I explicitly claimed that my estimate was unsubstantiated. I just looked it up as well, and the equivalent quality sheet is $19 per 4'x8' sheet at the closest Lowes. I bought a 4'x4' sheet locally for $19. So, I only paid 2x. Seems like a high premium still. I wonder what home improvement stores pay wholesale?

I dunno, I think technological progress does cause deflation to some degree, and it's perhaps one reason why folk haven't perceived inflation as much as otherwise over the last couple decades.

Burritos, blue jeans and Honda Civics haven't changed much technologically over the years, and their prices seem to track with average inflation.

From a user experience, a $1500 computer from 10 years ago is still likely to be usable and able to run modern software. Buying a $1500 computer today is a significant upgrade.

Burritos on the other hand aren't changing, and yet they're seemingly 50%-100% more expensive than they were 10 years ago.

Is it not possible that certain markets are deflating while others are inflating?

Perhaps inflation and technological advancement is analogous to a temperature during a phase change in matter, i.e. there's energy going in but the temperature is holding steady. Maybe we'll soon reach a saturation point and inflation will start tracking again?

For fun I looked up a 2011 vs. 2021 Honda Civic. That's likely a much more apples-to-apples comparison. About $16k to $21k, or 31%. That's about 2.7% per year, which seems to be slightly more than claimed inflation as well.

That's interesting, I think. I suspect cars are becoming more expensive to manufacture over time due to more stringent regulations. Lower emissions, more active safety features, etc. Maybe certain raw materials have become more expensive as well? Or maybe NRE costs have gone up across the board now that electric cars are becoming mainstream?

The economy is projected to grow quickly in 2021 though and even 2022 is projected to grow 3.5% which is still higher than trump's 2.5% average. The debt burden may shrink from sheer growth alone.