RE: RE: Inflation: 1 Hamburger cost $0.15 up until the 1960s, 2022: $1.46, what will it cost in a year?
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RE: Inflation: 1 Hamburger cost $0.15 up until the 1960s, 2022: $1.46, what will it cost in a year?

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Coming from a country that experienced hyperinflation in the 1980s (80% consumer price inflation in a single month in March 1990!), I cannot disagree that inflation is an issue and that it causes severe problems in welfare.

But as an economist, I would like to point to the fact that you seem to be comparing nominal prices: the price that was shown in a given year. From an economic perspective, one should compare the real prices: that is, to take into account the changes in purchase power due to inflation (sometimes referred to "adjusting the price for inflation" or to "removing the inflation from prices" - the latter sounding counterintuitive/contradictory, as you are precisely compounding the inflation rate to bring prices to the real value, equivalent to today's purchase power).

Your first link [1] refers to this: "$0.21 in 1960 is equal to about $1.81 in August 2018" and to $2.02 in January 2022 ($0.15 in the 1960s is equivalent to $1.44 in January 2022). If the hamburger in MacDonald's currently cost $1.46, then it is about the same in real terms [edited].

Here's the Wikipedia entry for real vs nominal values: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Real_versus_nominal_value_(economics)
And the US CPI inflation calculator: https://data.bls.gov/cgi-bin/cpicalc.pl?cost1=0.15&year1=196001&year2=202201
And this is a German inflation calculator, that also allows to bring nominal values in DM to real values in euro: https://www.lawyerdb.de/Inflationrate.aspx

@lordflu: Coming from a | Ecency