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The $25k car is going extinct?

(media.hubspot.com)
319 points pseudolus | 1 comments | 29 Jun 25 15:59 UTC | HN request time: 0.316s | source
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slg ◴[30 Jun 25 04:28 UTC] No.44419379[source]▶
I don't know why inflation is dismissed so quickly. The article lists the industry average price increase as 29.2% and the inflation value I got out of the US Bureau of Labor Statistics calculator[1] was 26.2%. So sure, "this isn’t just a case of inflation affecting the entire vehicle market" [emphasis mine], but it is mostly that.

[1] - https://www.bls.gov/data/inflation_calculator.htm

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dingaling ◴[30 Jun 25 05:36 UTC] No.44419788[source]▶
Retail inflation is based on the prices of goods, including new cars.

So it's pointless to compare car prices to inflation because they are part of the basis of the measure. Hence why they track closely.

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1. slg ◴[30 Jun 25 06:13 UTC] No.44419987[source]▶
This can quickly turn into a philosophical debate rather than an economic one. Which value went up first, the chicken or the egg?

Personally, I think the way it makes the most sense is thinking of inflation as the change in the value of money rather than the change in the cost of goods, in large part because costs rise for non-goods too. For example, my employer pays me more today than they did in 2019 despite my employer not selling any goods or buying many goods outside of laptops for their employees and they obviously don't care about my personal expenses when determining annual raises.