If the brick is more insulating, it should require less insulation and less heating / cooling costs, thereby reducing your expenses, no?

My upfromt cost is still higher, and the wall cannot be less than 1 brick thick so I cant use fewer bricks. Maybe I am a construction company and someone else gets the befits of better insulation, or maybe fuel costs went up, you have to isolate discussion to the item itself.

I hear you, and I am trying to grapple with this myself.

So the cost of bricks went up by X, and maybe the cost of electricity also went up by Y, and the labor costs are also higher by Z, but adding them all up, my costs are not up by X + Y + Z, but something less than that. Should that be part of CPI? Is that part of CPI? Is that part of something else? Very interesting in knowing an official economist take on this.

Depends on many factors:

Can you achieve the same level of insulation for less, by using traditional insulating materials and techniques instead of insulating bricks?

Does the law mandate that your bricks have a certain R-Value?

How much heating and cooling is required in the climate where the building is located?

As usual there is no simple answer.

Bricks are OK as an analogy, but very poor as an example: as far as I'm aware modern bricks are no more insulating than old bricks, and neither are any good at the job. If there is a modern and insulating brick, then I don't think it's really caught on very much yet.

You can buy dumbphones (the old sort of bricks, in your analogy) for less than $20. They have basic cameras, small screens, and 2G connectivity. As I understand it, a similar phone would have cost $100 in, say, 2007.

No one is stopping you from buying the $20 phone with the 2007-era features. You will still be able to text and call just fine. You just want the features of the smart phone. That's why I think it's fair to say that the cost of mobile phones hasn't gone up.

This is the case across many categories, the big exception being cars - automakers simply refuse to offer basic/inexpensive cars in the North American market for whatever reason.

You can't just use old products today and claim they are adequate For example I cannot work from home with a dial-up connection. You need a few megabits to do a video interview and get a job, to work from home, etc.

So your CPI might say internet is cheaper, but that is a fantasy, because in real life I pay 2x as much for a 50 mb connection.

Likewise I cannot use a 20 year old phone - those frequencies have been shut down.

There are several sitations where I was legally required to have a smartphone - one of them was registering a birth.

So again your CPU will claim that phone got better, but in real life I have to spend more money to remain an functioning member of society.

You couldn't have used your dial-up to work from home in the 90s either. Your internet is doing more for you, so it's not fair to call it's higher price "inflation."

Companies are making new feature phones today that will connect with cell networks. And are you really required to have a smartphone to register a birth? Was there not a workaround for feature phones? State governments have to be able to let indigent people register births, so there must be a workaround.

> Your internet is doing more for you, so it's not fair to call it's higher price "inflation."

It's not really doing it for me, is it? The requirement that I pay for modern internet is forced on me against my will.

Employers require that they can see my face when conducting an interview, the government requires that I apply for a visa online and upload 300 mb of documents.

The hospital demands that I register online and work with their system.

If you don't want to be homeless, you must pay for the modern service. And if it is more expensive, then inflation went up, your budget is less today than it was before.

> As I understand it, a similar phone would have cost $100 in, say, 2007.

I remember that they cost $24 in 2008.

Are the vast majority of insulated bricks used in repair for unheated spaces and walls, or in new construction?