alt Hacker NewsPrices have doubled since 1999!? Restaurant prices near me have doubled since 2015, easily. And that's not counting delivery going from free to 25% of the meal cost.
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Yes restaurant prices have increased more but other things have increased less. For example entertainment, clothing, electronics, even automobiles.
Not all components rise in cost at the same time. Overall, prices have roughly doubled since the early 2000's--things that I expect to cost, say, $10 would now cost around $20. However, some things have risen in cost much more quickly: housing prices, for one.
The things you are talking about are a phenomenon largely of the COVID era and later. The biggest wage gains post-COVID have been in the lowest end of the job market, and services where almost-minimum-wage labor is a high fraction of their cost have commensurately risen in price the fastest (e.g., fast food). Similarly, a lot of the easy money flowing into unprofitable grow-then-make-money businesses (like delivery firms) have stopped flowing in, so those services have had to actually make money from customers, which causes their costs to rise.
Except for a brief spike during Covid unemployment has been below 5% for a long time which has led to more wage growth for cooks and waiters than for programmers.
It's CPI, they'll just keep changing the basket of goods until the numbers look like they want them to.
"Well, inflation since 2015 is nonexistent if you swap out steaks for 3 day old catfish and fruits for kool aid packets"
Not quite. The value of the currency has declined by 33% since 1999.
Prices are subject to the combination of the value of the currency and the value of the good. Food may be worth more than in the past, for example, so you cannot look at the value of the currency alone.