I’m an econ college student, and I just can’t wrap my head around it. An inflation index should be exponential, and it looks like it is until 1980, then it just…planes off. In order for a linear CPI to make sense, inflation would have to be constantly decreasing and that just doesn’t make any sense to the experience of the average consumer.
Edit: here’s the series in question.
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/CPIAUCSL
In: Economics
Are you sure that what you’re taking as the index isn’t actually the index’s derivative? Usually in addition to the actual index (sometimes even instead) the rate of increase/decrease is published.
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