It seems strange to me that there can be such high asset inflation over the last 10 years, yet CPI remains relatively low. It seems like the combination of gains of efficiency in production and supply chains and the worsening of quality in many products is a way inflation is hidden. A couple examples I'm thinking of.
If my fast food burger is the same price, but the meat is worse quality, smaller, and contains filler, hasn't the dollar lost value against the baseline quality burger of past times? Since value is relative, how can you claim a stable dollar, when you're comparing it to an unstable food product.
If I buy my jeans for the same price as I always have but they wear out twice as fast (which I find they do now), haven't they actually gotten twice as expensive. Is product lifetime accounted for in CPI in anyway, and if not isn't it hiding inflation?
Most people don’t realize that the basket content comes from what real people actually buy, and that’s tracked over 4 years. It is adjusted for item quantity and in a pretty sophisticated way.
That said, it’s not a cost-of-living index, in that it’s not trying to measure the amount of money required to meet a given living standard (https://www.bls.gov/cpi/questions-and-answers.htm#Question_9), so if the same item degrades in quality (but the quantity doesn’t change), that generally won’t be captured.
I think the answer to your headline question is no, but realize that it’s measuring consumer price inflation — things a typical consumer buys in a 2 week period.
(The next logical question is “What about housing?” - yes, but in the form of shelter, which isn’t the same as housing prices: https://www.bls.gov/cpi/factsheets/owners-equivalent-rent-an...)