I think you touched on it in your last sentence. It's not actually innumeracy, it's an example of "lying with statistics" to get attention and/or push an agenda

I think you touched on it in your last sentence. It's not actually innumeracy, it's an example of "lying with statistics" to get attention and/or push an agenda (depending on the source). Tangentially, thanks for bringing this up. I've personally been vaguely aware of all the "inflation is high!!!!!!" articles and hadn't dug in enough to see the reality prior to this post.