I think inflation is a perception problem which some countries attempt to manage, maybe not all. However, there will be political decisions to do this.
I regard the UK’s measure of it almost laughable.
For instance it was Thatcher’s problem to solve in the 80s and her use of interest rates caused long recessions doing that. This is what they are trying to avoid. So inflation can be there, and be quite a bit (relatively), but the political idea is to hide it.
Thatcher blamed the unions attempting to get raises to match inflation, as if it was utterly selfish to not take a 10% pay cut every year, but the fundamental problem was oil prices in the mid 70s tripling. The perception fedback into the loop though, so knowing your wages were dropping 10% this year was bad, but if you don’t know, inflation can be perhaps controlled or ignored.
This is why typically in the UK incomes were static since around 2009, but there was 5% inflation a year, combined with low interest rates, it meant that UK earners lost around 40% of their wealth from about 2009 to about 2016.
However, when it was at 5% a lot of things went waaaay up in price. Food you bought every week. Chicken Breasts tripled in price. Most items shrank in size and went up price. It suits the world now to write this off as “it’ll stop you getting fat”, however, it was clear for a number of years inflation was hitting at a much higher rate on things you spend on regularly.
Oh, and I know in the UK (and I think everywhere) that asset prices are not included in inflation. Otherwise we’d have been at 5-10% inflation some years on that alone in the UK. But it’s a blind spot long removed (was it ever in there?)
How is the statistic of lower inflation done? Enter the falling electronic saviour good. From around 1990 when it was pc’s through laptops to satnavs to flatscreen televisions, there have been things which half in price regularly as the electronic good matures. We’re all familiar with these. A widescreen telly went from 5 grand to 400 pounds in the space of 4-5 years. This was repeated with the flatscreen version. Monitors. Smartphones are one of the things which hasn’t had the big falls in prices. This ends up with things like say, the current high drop item, ssd hard drives weirdly in your inflation basket (I can’t check this, I did go looking for lists but they’re not readily available, but I suspect it is true, GPS was on there a few years back when they were dropping like a stone, and I’ve bought one in my life). You’d think they’d run out of these eventually, but it seems not yet.
So in summary. As they are calculated at the moment, I don’t think it represents real inflation due to loading of the baskets to minimise it. Because the strategy since 2009 has been to load up on countries with debt then deflate the currency to reduce the debt burden. It seems to work for the governments. Inflation is perceived to be under control, while normal people get poorer. But as is anything, it is until it isn’t. Then the faults of the measurement process will become clear.