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Exposed: The True Cost of Inflation |
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Grocery costs in 1997, and grocery costs today… Don't listen to the radio, listen to the refrigerator… Have you heard of the "Presidential Bypass"? It's a legal loophole the rich use to keep their money. And though you might not know it, you can use the same exact loophole to slash your taxes. Legendary investor Robert Kiyosaki gives the details here.
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Dear reader, |
A young lady recently went filing through her sister-in-law's photo album. Out fell a grocery receipt, dated June 20, 1997. |
One hundred twenty-two items appeared on the receipt, all items common to the standard American family. |
The bill ran to $155.34. |
Here is a question: How much money would the identical 122 grocery items cost in today's dollars? |
Your choices are these: |
A): $197.63 |
B): $252. 87 |
C): $407. 90 |
D): $504.11 |
The devil is in me today, so allow me to confound you with yet another option: |
E): $563.44 |
Have you made your selection? Answer shortly. |
Amazon Drags Down the Stock Market |
First, let us check in on another scene of multi-decade inflation — Wall Street. |
Stocks absorbed a substantial lacing yesterday. Reports Yahoo Finance: |
US stocks took sizable hits again on Thursday… |
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The S&P 500 moved roughly 1.2% lower, while the Nasdaq Composite shed 1.5%. The Dow Jones Industrial Average lost over 1.1%, or more than 500 points. |
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The market is in the midst of a full-on tech wipeout… The losses have been spurred by worries about AI disruption to established software players — a risk that had been overlooked by investors focused on the fallout from massive AI spending until recently. |
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Amazon led the downward track — down 11% on the day on disappointing earnings. |
Both gold and silver likewise absorbed substantial blows. |
Bitcoin, meantime, shed some $15,000 yesterday… should it concern you. |
Yet let us revisit today's question. |
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Drum Roll… |
How much money would a grocery bill of 122 items… that ran to $155.34 in 1997… cost today? |
Here again are your choices: |
A): $197.63 |
B): $252. 87 |
C): $407. 90 |
D): $504.11 |
E): $563.44 |
What is the answer? The answer is D. |
The grocery bill that ran to $155.34 in 1997 runs to $504.11 today — a $348.77 increase. |
The figure reduces to a 4.2% annualized inflation rate. Yet what is the annualized median household income increase since 1997? |
The answer is under 3.1%. |
That is, the median household income has lagged the grocery inflation. |
Yet official government statisticians would have you believe the opposite. They would have you believe that grocery inflation has lagged the median household income. |
Don't Believe Your Lying Eyes |
Mr. Ryan McMaken of the Mises Institute: |
So how does the official Consumer Price Index (CPI) published by the Bureau of Labor Statistics compare [the two lists]? The increase of the CPI between June of 1997 and December of 2025 translates to an annualized rate of increase of 2.5 percent in the cost of living. |
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Not only is the CPI's rate of increase significantly lower than the [observed] rate of increase, the CPI rate of increase is low enough to imply that median household incomes have been rising, not falling, in real terms over that time span. |
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In other words, while real-world prices for consumer staples like those reflected in the [sample] … has more than tripled since 1997, the official CPI has only just barely doubled. So are we really supposed to believe that we can eat 2/3rds as much food, change diapers 2/3rds as often, and live in only 2/3rds of a home as compared to the olden days of President Clinton, and yet still enjoy the same standard of living? |
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Or is it more sensible to believe that the BLS games its statistics to make the politicians look good and to make stealth cuts to all the government benefit promises, tax deductions, etc. that are indexed to the official CPI? |
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I believe it far more sensible to believe that the BLS games its statistics to make the politicians look good and to make stealth cuts to all the government benefit promises, tax deductions, etc. that are indexed to the official CPI. |
Years and years of evidence are in back of it. |
Implements of Statistical Torture |
How do government data-torturers perpetrate their whim-wham? |
This they accomplish through the aggressive use of "hedonic adjustments," "seasonal adjustments" and other such implements of statistical torture. |
Such tinkerings are intended to clarify… to distinguish true signal from distracting noise… to flatten bumps and smooth variations. |
Yet in the hands of government data-torturers, they do not clarify. They obfuscate and mislead. |
They distribute not light but fog. |
In these hands these adjustments are as authentic as a false set of teeth, a bald man's toupee or a politician's handshake. |
Listen to the Refrigerator |
Mr. McMaken, in conclusion: |
As long as politicians still spout delusional fantasies about there being "virtually no inflation" in America, as long as Federal Reserve Governors still pretend that all our inflation problems are "transitory" and that caving in to political demands to debase the dollar even more rapidly is acceptable, and as long as news outlets keep taking a ridiculous make-believe price index seriously, Americans will need people… to keep speaking truth to power and to keep public discourse about prices grounded in reality. |
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"Don't listen to the radio, listen to the refrigerator," ran an old Soviet joke. |
The radio of course represented government propaganda, the refrigerator represented lived reality. |
And in the contemporary United States? |
Do not listen to the radio — or the computer or the television. |
Listen to the refrigerator. |
Brian Maher |
for Freedom Financial News |
P.S. Here's a question for you: |
Did you know that two of America's most famous businessmen legally paid $0 in federal income tax for years? |
That's right, they paid $0 in federal income tax for years — as in nada. |
But how? |
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It turns taxes from a burden into a wealth-building tool. |
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Go here to learn how to make the tax code your friend. |
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