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You're forgetting health care costs, which have skyrocketed since the 80s. Interestingly, all of these costs are not part of official inflation numbers, so real
by coliveira 8y ago
You're forgetting health care costs, which have skyrocketed since the 80s. Interestingly, all of these costs are not part of official inflation numbers, so real inflation for middle class is much higher than the reports say.
- arethuza 8y agoWhy wouldn't you include health care costs in inflation figures? Seems to be something that most people have to pay one way or another?
- vivafrance 8y agoThe Fed and the government in general are incentivized to make inflation appear much lower than it actually is. If you use the same calculation the Fed used in the 80s to measure inflation then we’d be at 10% today.
- coliveira 8y agoIt is a game played by the American government so the economy seems better than it really is. Another example is that large part of the GDP growth in the US is related to health care, so you get here a double effect: higher economy growth compared to other countries with socialized medicine, and lower inflation numbers when in fact it is the opposite.
- jaggederest 8y agoYou're right. Here's the graph for that one. https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/fredgraph.png?g=kipg https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/fredgraph.png?g=kipg Another factor of two increase.