alt Hacker NewsThey're not necessarily "cooked," (but they certainly can be). Inflation is genuinely hard to calculate since it's different for everyone, goods and services purchased drift over time, and as you mentioned, that exact good also changes over time. CPI (and others) are more useful in a MoM or YoY context. At 10 years, it's better viewed as best guess cost of typical living rather than an economic indicator comparing apples and oranges.
> housing
This is actually the hardest to get right because it's the largest, and 2/3 of Americans own homes, so part of their costs are fixed.
No it's cooked. For high tech items, they assume that improved technology means you are getting more for your money even if the price goes up, so they discount it. It's true that you get more for your money, but it ignores threshold effects, like you just can't buy an equivalent phone for $10 even if todays phone's are 200x better.
Then there's the "owner's equivalent rent" BS and this is 25% of CPI. It answers the question "If someone were to rent your home today, how much do you think it would rent for monthly, unfurnished, and without utilities?" It assumes rental price and housing costs are somehow linked when in reality asset prices have far outstripped rent.