hey everyone James Tierney here wanted to respond to a comment that I got on one of my old YouTube videos which asked about the difference between the CPI of the Consumer Price Index and the GDP deflator which is a question that comes up a lot in my intro to a macro class so both the CPI and the GDP deflator try and measure a get an average of crisis in an economy the CPI by definition is taking a basket of approximately 210 goods that has been identified as the average urban family of fours monthly consumption and just measuring those month month and seeing how it changes the GDP deflator on the other hand doesn't have a specific basket of goods that's specific to consumers the GDP deflator is looking at all goods and services that are included in GDP so you know this would include a lot of things that the common household wouldn't consume maybe expensive cars it also won't include things that maybe an average household will consume because they aren't produced within that country or they may be used Goods lots of lots of different things so they're not exactly the same we usually use CPI which is the one that you'll see a lot if you're reading the news that's usually the headline inflation number we usually use CPI more because when we're thinking of inflation a lot of times we're thinking of how it's impacting the consumer so we will use the Consumer Price Index more