Whipper Snapper,
I think the easiest way to judge whether or not we have inflation is to look at our lifestyles. When I was young, back when the Earth was cooling and we all rode dinosaurs, a husband's salary, at an average job, was enough to buy a house, a car, take vacations and afford several children. Today, you have to be awfully affluent for one spouse not to have to work to maintain the same sort of standard of living. This has nothing to do with "wanting" to work. It has to do with having to work.
Things like medical care, property insurance, education, etc. are rising in price much faster than reported cost indices would indicate. There is also a quality cost to inflation that is impossible to measure, things like potholes in the road that cost too much to fix, mentally ill people released to become homeless because we can't afford mental hospitals any more, early parole for violent criminals who cost too much to keep locked up and drinking water that may not be potable.
There are also the tricks corps use. The next time you buy a "pound" of coffee, look at how much it weighs. Downsizing has more than one definition. <G>
MB |
