> Pick whatever word you like if "inflation" is reserved for economists because regular people are "just too dumb to understand".
Regular people understand inflation just fine. How useful it is to them is debatable, but it doesn't have to be for everyone. It's okay if some measurements are only useful to scientists and economists. The measure of the speed of light doesn't mean much in my day to day life either, but we don't have to abolish it because of that.
> We need a concept for debasement / hidden tax that allows people to hold their policymakers accountable.
I think what most people are looking for is simply cost of living measure. They want to know by how much the costs to live (housing, food, etc.) have increased over inflation. Which we have. But that one might actually be a case of being "too dumb to understand", explaining why it is not commonly put to use. Inflation is, indeed, a much simpler concept. Or it may be that the ultimate cost of living measurement comes from one's own personal accounting records[1], negating the need to reach for any 'universal' perspective.
[1] But I suspect most people don't keep any accounting records, so most likely the first one.
> what most people are looking for is simply cost of living measure
You may have cracked the conundrum right there. People use inflation as a gauge of COL. That is incorrect, but understandable given the lack of a well-publicised national COL metric.
Which is interesting as you'd think actually living, and incurring the costs that go along with it, would be a much more useful gauge.
Probably goes along with my suspicion that most people, especially those not already accounting for business activities, don't keep any meaningful record of their transactions. Hard to calculate COL without data.
But at the same time, there isn't much effort in publishing national COL metrics as it is presumed that people will already know their own situation, which is always going to be way more telling. Individual COL can vary widely, even between neighbours, let alone on a national scale.
> you'd think actually living, and incurring the costs that go along with it, would be a much more useful gauge
Not for a monetary authority. Given how much drama we have around even our Census Bureau, this gap makes sense. (Also, for every complaint about a given inflation gauge, one increases the parameter and thus bitchable space by orders of magnitude when it comes to COL.)
> there isn't much effort in publishing national COL metrics as it is presumed that people will already know their own situation
We track this information, though. Anyone doing any economic-related work will be well familiar with the data. We just don't publicize in any grand fashion because who else needs to hear it? I'll grant you that people who write comments on the internet tend to be completely out to lunch, but most people have some kind of handle on their COL situation. They aren't going to learn anything they don't already know, so there is no reason to listen in. You need demand in order for supply to show up.
Inflation doesn't mean much to Average Joe either, to be fair, except it is a leading indicator of interest rates, and Average Joe does care about interest rates, so this is why Average Joe is listening for inflation information.
> But political leaders won’t.
The leaders are the people. The very same people.
If you are trying to imply that the leaders are as lazy about democracy as they are accounting, and are willing to let the hired help do whatever it wants because they don't want to ever have to take the time to talk to them, I'm with you. Not much you can do there. But if they don't care, nobody else is going to either.
Regular people understand inflation just fine. How useful it is to them is debatable, but it doesn't have to be for everyone. It's okay if some measurements are only useful to scientists and economists. The measure of the speed of light doesn't mean much in my day to day life either, but we don't have to abolish it because of that.
> We need a concept for debasement / hidden tax that allows people to hold their policymakers accountable.
I think what most people are looking for is simply cost of living measure. They want to know by how much the costs to live (housing, food, etc.) have increased over inflation. Which we have. But that one might actually be a case of being "too dumb to understand", explaining why it is not commonly put to use. Inflation is, indeed, a much simpler concept. Or it may be that the ultimate cost of living measurement comes from one's own personal accounting records[1], negating the need to reach for any 'universal' perspective.
[1] But I suspect most people don't keep any accounting records, so most likely the first one.