When we think about price changes we often think of them in terms of the changes in the Consumer Price Index (CPI-U for all Urban Consumers). Looking at it that way, we may get the idea that price movements are monolithic i.e. that they all move together, so "prices" were up 2% or 5% or whatever, over the last 12 months. But that is a bit misleading since prices all move independently. For this reason, the U.S. Bureau of  Labor Statistics publishes a CPI database with a breakdown of all the various components. By analyzing the various components of the CPI over the last 20 years we developed the following Chart. Click Chart for larger image As we can see … [Read more...]