I'm not sure how to break an organization out of that mindset, but it disappoints me when I see IT support willfully living up to it.

This is why I'm skeptical whenever anybody says that LLMs make them more efficient at work. Did they save you time, or did they just let you transfer your workload to somebody else?

I got there via Ed Zitron, but I'm guessing you already know about him.

Meanwhile, Windows Server (y'know, the OS corporations use for, uh, servers) by default comes with Xbox Game Bar and Xbox Live services installed. (Turned off, to be fair, but still installed.)

Samuel Beckett wrote a play about that.

Also, state and local minimum wage hikes of the last several years have buoyed household income in the lowest two quintiles. But if you're working poor in a place that didn't get one - say, Pennsylvania - then your real income has declined. That also doesn't show up in natl averages.

Even if inflation has stabilized, it's stabilized with high housing/medical/education costs (and food, whose prices hit an inflection point in 2020). Households of limited means are justified in feeling like the economy sucks even if the stats show otherwise.

Think of CPI as an average - some prices in the bundle rise faster than inflation (housing, medical care, education) and some slower or even get cheaper (electronics, travel). The stuff that rises faster tend to be needs and the stuff that doesn't tend to be wants.

If there's one famous chef who secretly has a stand

Some of the biggest drivers of wage growth at the lowest income quintile have been state and local minimum wage hikes. If you live in a state that didn't get a recent min wage increase (say, PA) you then your experience isn't captured in natl averages.

People absorb growing housing costs, especially renters, by moving further away from their jobs, further away from their communities, and accepting smaller apartments. You don't see these compromises on CPI.

Housing and medical care cost growth have outpaced CPI for decades. They're offset by slower growth / price reductions in manufactured goods, entertainment, and travel. The numbers might average out but the former cause more anxiety than the latter.

Looking strictly at CPI is also, as always, examining cost of living through a mirror darkly. It's making multiple errors of composition in that 1) it doesn't affect everybody equally and 2) it doesn't affect all foods equally.