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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: 0.308s | 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. mlyle ◴[30 Jun 25 06:40 UTC] No.44420171[source]▶
Saying you can't compare car prices to inflation because cars are in the CPI... We're really doing this?

New cars make up about 4% of the CPI, and used cars around 3%, so together they’re only a small part of the inflation basket. If new car prices doubled tomorrow and nothing else changed, headline inflation would rise by about 4%, but car prices would have increased 92% relative to inflation.

Inflation measures the decline in the value of money over time. If car prices rise significantly more or less than that decline can explain, that’s meaningful. If they don't... that's not.