Whole lot of mixed messaging about the economy lately. I feel like they really cherry pick numbers sometimes. Groceries definitely don't feel cheaper to me, I don't give a shit how much a TV costs now.
My partner's junk Hyundai Genesis that she loved died - the engine's timing belt failed and destroyed the whole engine in the process. No new crate engines exist for sale so It was either spend $7500 on a used engine and hope it'll last longer, or buy something else - it sucks as it was terrible timing all around.
Yup, you're supposed to replace those timing belts every so often so that doesn't happen. I'm seeing recently sold engines on eBay for $1.5k -$3k so the quote you got was quite high since there shouldn't be 40 hours of labor involved.
Well, that's not a good thing. It means people are teetering on the brink of poverty, aren't spending on anything but bare necessities, and that's going to cause a major recession and put a buttload more people on the street.
That's what they're saying, it just went up less compared to previous time periods. You will always have inflation unless something really bad happens.