What inflation rate should one use to calculate whether a particular price increase is keeping pace with inflation? Is it legitimate to use various rates of inflation?

Out of a paper set for the postgraduate diploma students at Rhodes University School of Journalism and Media Studies came an interesting set of answers to these questions.

The paper itself arose from a question JMS colleagues Guy Berger, Robert Brand and I discussed over a pizza lunch with some of those postgraduate students in the week of the unveiling of the 2008/08 Budget.