Inflation Update: The Latest Figures, Why It Happened, What To Expect

The best way to obfuscate the truth is to make it complicated. For example, the Framers of the Constitution went to great pains to make it simple. Each paragraph, sentence, phrase, and word was handed over to a committee whose function was to render it in language that any citizen could understand. Indeed, any literate citizen can read it today and easily understand the spirit and intent of every provision. Then we turned it over to the lawyers and the intellectuals. The chief intellectual was Woodrow Wilson who taught us to reinterpret it and toss provisions that weren't to our liking. Now, let's consider the economists. They tell us every day what's going to happen in the economy, and every day they are wrong. So, they spend the next day explaining why the economy had the temerity to wander off into the weeds. At least weathermen have the humility to hedge their predictions with percentages. Economists would do well to follow their example. Isn't it interesting that few pay attention to economists, that almost all take weather forecasts with a healthy dose of skepticism, and lawyers are reviled. We the People can look at the the stock market, the food market, and the housing market and realize that we're being lied to. Inflation? We don't look at quarterly statistics. We look at the fact that we're making decisions to skip meals so we can afford medications, to replace vacations with "staycations" so that we can pay the rent or mortgage. We may not understand monetary policy but we're damned sure that our President hasn't shopped for groceries or paid for gas in a very long time. The very real inflation that we're living with is much greater than quarterly data indicates. We look at the prices we paid when President Trump (the only President I ever heard who could explain monetary policy like an economist) versus the prices we are paying today.