The problem, usually, is that that number is an average from a variety of different areas of life. If you can expect to make purchases from all those places at once then it’s mostly fine but that’s not what happens.

Instead, housing and food shoot through the fucking roof, especially housing where a lot of people tend to live. Once the solution is “move far away from your community just to be able to afford a home” then that solution is basically just invalid. Luxury goods don’t up nearly as fast, they have real competition and people can, usually, not buy those products so there needs to be some level of sanity there. You end up with a situation where poor people end up experiencing a rate of inflation far higher and more stressful than the average implies. And guess what? Most people are poor these days, even the ones who’d like to not believe it.

And then you add on to that that if your company does not give you a raise based on inflation by default then even if they match it and pat themselves on the back you did not recieve a raise. Matching inflation or less means that you’ve lost salary even if the number is technically higher. You only get a raise when your buying power exceeds the year before.