as being the defintion of inflation
to me, it is almost as silly as suggesting an average weight of human beings
how would you conduct such a thing?
we are different ages, sexes, have diferent lifestyles
so you can’t have an average weight, and why would you?
how can you have a ‘general level’ of prices?
I’m confused
You can have an average weight, since you can measure weight.
Prices, on the other hand, are impossible to measure.
you can have an average weight
but the average weight is meaningless
it is no indication of how healthy we are as i mentioned earlier, we are different ages, sexes and have differnet lifetsyles
so what does working out he vaerga weight tell us, nothing
Read Schumpeter’s writing from the “Strictly speaking” onwards.
if it tells you something, then its not true that it tells you nothing.
you claim it is no indication of how healthy people are. but perhaps it does exactly, this, indicate, which is something less than determine/prove/explain etc. etc. average weight is a meaningful statistic that can be used appropriately or innapropriately. if you are deciding how many seats to install for passengers on your new aireplane, and are concerned about whether it will fly given its wing properties and engine power, having an idea of the weights of your likely customers would be very important.
I dont care to defend the notions of ‘price level’ that mainstream economists use but this doesnt require we throw out the baby with the bathwater.
my tip is you should criticise the ‘price level’ statistics directly, and not through analogy. analysing basket of good prices is inherintley a not very objective statistic to collate since its determined on basekts of consumers goods that some bureocrats deem typical, it lacks an objective basis to factor in quality improvements to products etc. plus its just more fodder for them to attach their bizarre keynesian ideologies to.