I decided to do a little online shopping today. I wanted to have a custom jigsaw puzzle made. I had one made 2 years ago. It had cost $75, made on a wooden background, with a nice fancy box. I went to the same site today, and for the same size puzzle, same construction, it now would cost $181!!!!
I went to look at an 8TB external SSD. a year ago it was $450. 5 months ago it was $720. Now it is $791.
Am I just being obscure, or have you had similar inflation experiences? Because this shure doesn't look like 2,7% a year to me. . . .
I don't think inflation has been 2.7% or whatever for a LONG time. I think it's extremely misleading because the talking heads where ever would always say, well, sure, a house is 5x as expensive now, electricity is 2x, but.. you can get a TV for 1/3 or less the cost, historically computers were massively cheaper... there are big differences there.
First, most of those "cheaper" things were like comparing hamburger to steak and calling it a pricing win - the $400 TV is in no way as well build or as good a display as the $1,200 one from years ago and the ones that are increased in cost to like $2,000 with actual equivalent higher end tech. But even if it was literally the same thing, most TVs are a once in 5-20 year purchase. But not a necessity, so while you could compare it sort of to a house, it's perfectly reasonable to just... not own a TV if you're hurting for money. Or if you just don't watch TV that way any more - I watch on my PC or phone so haven't owned a TV since college 20 years ago.
And that's the thing, you can hide a lot when you don't compare same to same because we'll all argue what is like for like. I see it all the time when people argue that timeshares are more expensive than a Motel 6. We all smack our foreheads on that. Telling me that it's a like for like to sub hamburger cause steak just got too expensive to be considered for inflation is just cooking the books IMHO.
The computer stuff is propped up as long as AI companies pre-pay for craptons of all parts, but I personally don't think it's a "forever" thing. I think the bubble will burst, and suddenly there'll be a glut. Even if I'm wrong about that - making computer stuff is hard, but not impossible and someone will eventually say, I can spin up such a thing for sure money from AI companies or computer and phone manufacturers. I think it'll reach an equilibrium. It might take a decade though. The stupid stuff with tariffs - my crystal ball is broken, but my guesstimate is it's going to be bi-modal probability - either it's going to change with political changes, or it's become sticky and we'll have them for a long long time. But they don't have difficult manufacturing processes or massive investment needed to affect really - governments can just change their minds. So I'd say it's likely to continue to be volatile, which again gives people a way to really cherry pick the "inflation basket" IMHO.
The bigger question to me is also whether that $181 is getting close to practical for small custom manufacturing companies in the US etc to potentially offer that vs where $75 just wasn't. Custom stuff sort of like that is what I'm doing - expanding from basic crafting. I don't know all the details, but if it was cardstock made into a puzzle it's certainly possible, depending on how much would have to go into the fancy box.
