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The $25k car is going extinct?

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319 points pseudolus | 1 comments | 29 Jun 25 15:59 UTC | HN request time: 0.331s | 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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anon7000 ◴[30 Jun 25 05:46 UTC] No.44419835[source]▶
Then it’s pointless to compare nearly anything to inflation, which means inflation isn’t very useful. You can still find many product categories increasing in price more slowly than inflation. Some much higher than inflation. So it is useful to compare inflation
replies(1): >>44419848 #
ajkjk ◴[30 Jun 25 05:48 UTC] No.44419848[source]▶
But the question we're asking is why the price of cars went up. "Inflation" isn't an answer. Inflation is what we call the price of cars going up. It still happens for a reason...
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moconnor ◴[30 Jun 25 11:25 UTC] No.44421936[source]▶
No. Inflation is what we call the value of money going down. As evidenced by needing to part with more of it in exchange for a standard basket goods.

It is fundamentally different to ask whether cars cost more because money is worth less, or whether cars cost more because we are making them less efficiently.

The ancestor comment points out that most of the change can be attributed to the former and as cars are only a small percentage of the inflation basket then it is reasonable to conclude that this is indeed the prime reason for the price rise.

The fundamentals of civilization would be a lot clearer if we measured the value of things in energy instead of a floating currency.

replies(1): >>44422204 #
1. roenxi ◴[30 Jun 25 11:58 UTC] No.44422204[source]▶
Or, to put it another way, going by the thread ancestor we expect the price of cars to have risen around 26.2% due to currency devaluation. If the price of cars has risen 29.2% it is more or less pointless to look at the car industry for an explanation. The price has risen by roughly what we'd expect if they were doing what they've been doing with no real changes.