If you're a government, you have an incentive to cook the books and make sure the official numbers lowball the inflation people actually experience.<p>That way, you can dismiss and gaslight people when they try to tell you that real wages have declined, especially for the middle class.
I agree with the general premise of the article, but<p>> Customer sentiment on restaurant cleanliness fell 4.2 percent this year<p>This is almost certainly due to heightened expectations after the initial phase of covid where people thought the disease spread through transmission from surfaces, and the norm in most of the service industry in 2020 was to keep things visibly shiny clean.