Economists like Paul Krugman are using a SURVEY of people asking them what they spent (for a NON FIXED basket of goods).
Let's say that you used to eat 10 units of grains ($1 each) and 5 units of beef ($5 each), for total spending of $35.
Let's now say that prices doubled (grains $2, beef $10).
You can't afford $70, so you adjust your consumption patterns and replace 2 units of beef with 2 units of grain (cutting your beef consumption in half).
We have now replicated the graph that Krugman so proudly showed off.
> Economists like Paul Krugman are using a SURVEY of people asking them what they spent (for a NON FIXED basket of goods).
1. What survey are you talking about? It's certainly not mentioned in the OP, and I don't have a twitter account so I can't see the prior tweets.
2. It feels incredibly suspect to paint "economists" as using this particular methodology, when "inflation" is usually synonymous with "CPI", and that uses a fixed basket. In fact your linked tweet even admits this.
Let's say that you used to eat 10 units of grains ($1 each) and 5 units of beef ($5 each), for total spending of $35.
Let's now say that prices doubled (grains $2, beef $10).
You can't afford $70, so you adjust your consumption patterns and replace 2 units of beef with 2 units of grain (cutting your beef consumption in half).
We have now replicated the graph that Krugman so proudly showed off.
"Food at home" prices are "only" up ~25%.
Paraphrased and copy-pasted from here: https://twitter.com/MorlockP/status/1761782081351196814