US consumers remain unimpressed with this progress, however, because they remember what they were paying for things pre-pandemic. Used car prices are 34% higher, food prices are 26% higher and rent prices are 22% higher than in January 2020, according to our calculations using PCE data.
While these are some of the more extreme examples of recent price increases, the average basket of goods and services that most Americans buy in any given month is 17% more expensive than four years ago.
That’s because most people don’t even know what the mode is. I’ve met a depressing number of people who think Median is the science term for the colloquial definition of Average. When you tell them the Mode is literally the spot with the most data points they then need the actual statistics definitions of Median and Average explained.
In this case everyone argues over median and average, not even realizing the mode clearly shows an entire section of our country is hurting really bad.