The observation actually strikes me as the ground truth. Inflation feels trivial on the coasts and brutal in the interior. But I don't buy the explanation. I

The observation actually strikes me as the ground truth. Inflation feels trivial on the coasts and brutal in the interior. But I don't buy the explanation. I think a better explanation is that the midwest and south have benefited from being in an incredibly low-friction trading bloc with a few extraordinarily productive states, while not having to compete for resources (land, goods, or services). A variety of forces have caused that trading bloc's productivity to more uniformly distribute. It's easy to sit in MO and say that we need "more Main Street less Wall Street". Until a hundred phd-holding 40+ year olds who've been making mid six figures and barely affording rent on 600 sqft shoeboxes for the last decade show up in on Main St and are willing to best any offer on their preferred houses. In cash. Suddenly "spreading the riches" sounds more like "oh shit I have to compete with all this wealth and education that used to be concentrated in midtown manhattan/SFBA". Turns out that the massive rent/service disparity in the USA was unsustainable. But, instead of prices "normalizing" on the coasts, the middle won't stay cheap. Not sure there's any good solution to that, other than the midwest and south becoming more productive and better educated. This round of Inflation is just the midwest's snow white main street realizing what gentrification means.