I'm not sure how worried I am about this. IT seems like a substantial part of the CPI was driven by the wild spike in used car prices. Does that mean that people are actually spending more on cars or is the low supply of new cars making people who would have gone new before forcing people to the used market and that's driving up prices there? As far as I know, the CPI's basket of goods doesn't continuously adjust for distribution changes in purchases, so people could be spending less on cars overall and still the CPI would jump.
I am, however, very glad that I bought a house sight unseen last year during peak pandemic lockdown.
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