<instructions>Your goal is to analyze the following comment and estimate how highly it will be upvoted by the Hacker News community.</instructions><comment><author>frankfrankfrank</author><text>This is unfortunately another one of those cases where the “government” + sycophantic institutions are essentially and deliberately fudging the numbers to make people believe something other than what is really happening, in essence, essentially also committing fraud. In the case of inflation, one way the trick works is that the basket of goods and services that are used to calculate the inflation are not at all reflective of the lived experience of regular people, let alone of most people.&lt;p&gt;It’s not really all that different than the fraudulent way in which the intentionally deceptive unemployment rate is calculated that is pushed by all the governments’ sycophants. In the USA that process drops people from the calculation by simply assuming disinterest in employment if one has been unemployed for a certain time (yes, it’s intentionally deceptive and manipulative, largely to defraud and cheat the markets and countries that are honest about their unemployment rates).&lt;p&gt;ShadowStats has been tracking the real inflation rate for a few decades now since a major change was made to fudge the number. It should be pretty eye opening for some people.&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.shadowstats.com&amp;#x2F;alternate_data&amp;#x2F;inflation-charts&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.shadowstats.com&amp;#x2F;alternate_data&amp;#x2F;inflation-charts&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;On a side note; it strikes me as a rather perplexing challenge that people seem to have a hard time adjusting their thinking to control for deceptive and manipulative practices, e.g., everyone who pays attention knows very well that the U.S. governments inflation numbers are literal fraud, yet they are the very number that drives so many aspects of everything. It’s like that meme scene in Idiocracy … “but fraudulent inflation rates are what the market craves” … “yes, but they’re causing illusion and deception to spread throughout the system that will cause collapse and ruin“ … * blank stare * “but fraudulent inflation rates is what the market craves”</text><parent_chain><item><author>ben_w</author><text>This inflation calculator says the USA has had cumulative inflation of only 20%, not 100%, in the last 11 years; of 42% in the last 18 years; and of 48% in the last 20 years: &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.usinflationcalculator.com&amp;#x2F;&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.usinflationcalculator.com&amp;#x2F;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;I suspect your restaurant and café receipts are not representative of general price changes.</text></item><item><author>ArtTimeInvestor</author><text>So from $62890 to $92610 in 18 years.&lt;p&gt;That is only a 4% increase per year.&lt;p&gt;I am surprised it is so little. I recently looked up some old receipts I paid in restaurants and cafes from 11 years ago. And then looked up the same items in the same cafes and restaurants now. The prices roughly doubled. So these increased by about 6% per year.&lt;p&gt;If developer salaries increased slower than inflation, why is it still so hard to find good freelance developers? Could the explanation be that the market has been flooded with people who call themselfes developers but hardly grasp what is going on under the hood? And just glue external code together until it kinda works?</text></item></parent_chain></comment><story><title>The Evolution of Developer Salaries: Looking Back 20 Years</title><url>https://codesubmit.io/blog/the-evolution-of-developer-salaries/#tracing-developer-salaries-in-america-from-2001-to-2019</url></story>
<instructions>Your goal is to analyze the following comment and estimate how highly it will be upvoted by the Hacker News community.</instructions><comment><author>ArtTimeInvestor</author><text>I suspect that website is not representative of general price changes. Maybe it looks at things that got easier to produce so they got cheaper via efficiency. They just don&amp;#x27;t sell cheaper because of inflation.</text><parent_chain><item><author>ben_w</author><text>This inflation calculator says the USA has had cumulative inflation of only 20%, not 100%, in the last 11 years; of 42% in the last 18 years; and of 48% in the last 20 years: &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.usinflationcalculator.com&amp;#x2F;&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.usinflationcalculator.com&amp;#x2F;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;I suspect your restaurant and café receipts are not representative of general price changes.</text></item><item><author>ArtTimeInvestor</author><text>So from $62890 to $92610 in 18 years.&lt;p&gt;That is only a 4% increase per year.&lt;p&gt;I am surprised it is so little. I recently looked up some old receipts I paid in restaurants and cafes from 11 years ago. And then looked up the same items in the same cafes and restaurants now. The prices roughly doubled. So these increased by about 6% per year.&lt;p&gt;If developer salaries increased slower than inflation, why is it still so hard to find good freelance developers? Could the explanation be that the market has been flooded with people who call themselfes developers but hardly grasp what is going on under the hood? And just glue external code together until it kinda works?</text></item></parent_chain></comment><story><title>The Evolution of Developer Salaries: Looking Back 20 Years</title><url>https://codesubmit.io/blog/the-evolution-of-developer-salaries/#tracing-developer-salaries-in-america-from-2001-to-2019</url></story>