Seems to be a work of fiction
Recently inflation has been bothering me. Well, not inflation itself, but rather the official inflation figures.
Apparently prices in Japan are dropping again, and are down 0.4% compared to last year.
The government has a target to increase inflation to around 2% a year.
On a personal level, deflation sounds good. Everyday life gets cheaper, and our savings and investments go further.
However, the official inflation figures don't seem to match up to my personal experience:
My personal rate of inflation does not seem to match the official government figures!
Maybe (probably) I am a strange person whose spending does not reflect the average consumer in Japan. This is likely, but doesn't completely explain the difference.
I mentioned on Facebook that I am reading a book called Own the World (review coming soon) and it has a very interesting chapter on inflation. Then, just a day later, I saw this post on Financial Samurai. The two are very similar.
The gist of their arguments is:
The seeming disconnect between official inflation numbers and my personal experience is something that has puzzled me for a while now, but these arguments seem to make sense and explain a lot.
On the other hand, this article was also published recently.
How about you? What do you think about Japan's inflation figures?
This post first ran on RetireJapan in August 2016
