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.
Inflation is always the main contribution to price increase. It only makes sense to compare price raise above or below inflation if you want to unearth factors specific to any given product or industry.
So even though inflation may feed into that stuff, there's plenty of causality to inspect. Why aren't there cheaper cars? Not because there's more money, but because nobody decided to make and sell a cheaper car. That's the stuff that we should be asking about. Not waving our hands and saying 'sucks, inflation'. The inflation happens at the speed it does because of things like this.
The reason may well be: who would sell a car, or a car part, or their labor, for less when there's so much money going around? But we can still ask plenty of questions about that. Cause I'm pretty damn sure the labor isn't raking in the difference at a rate matching inflation. And it sure seems like there's plenty of room to compete on price, so if no one's doing that effectively, why not?
Yes. But the most common reason for setting up higher price is because you can, because there's more money flowing in the economy than it should be. Going into details is in the grand scheme of things about as useful as rearranging chairs on the Titanic.
> Why aren't there cheaper cars? Not because there's more money, but because nobody decided to make and sell a cheaper car. That's the stuff that we should be asking about.
Yes. But we should be asking why cars are 3% more expensive, because their prices rose by 29% while the inflation is "only" 26% (don't remember exact numbers), not why car prices rose 29%. If you don't deduct inflation you are interested in wrong things because large numbers make you think there's a drastic reason.
Does 3% even deserve and explanation? Isn't it fully explained by toxic advertising making consumer want heavier car year after year, that naturally cost more?
Money supply always changes. But yes, inflation is possible without changing money supply, if for example economy shrinks or there's some process that reactivated dormant capital that people had just sitting around and not being used by the economy.
In the end it's always the same thing. More money than it should be. It's just that "should be" is very complex and "more money" only a little bit simpler.