Thread: Honest US Inflation Rate Hits 10%

Rating the real cost of inflation

The fedaral government says that inflation is under control at 2% to 3% a year – with prices up 15 percent since 2002 – but some key prices have risen much faster, and critics charge that the government is undercounting the pace of inflation
By Dean Calbreath
UNION-TRIBUNE STAFF WRITER

If you're like the average American, when you fill your car up at the gas pump, you're paying 84 percent more than you were in 2000, for an average price rise of 12 percent per year, according to the latest data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Many of the goods in your grocery basket – such as bread, eggs, orange juice, lettuce, tomatoes and ground chuck – have risen between 4 percent and 5 percent per year. The cost of electricity has risen 4 percent a year, while natural gas has risen 8 percent. And medical care has gone up about 5 percent a year, according to those same data.

Those rates of inflation – the kind of price rises that Americans feel on a daily basis – are often far higher than the official rate of inflation, which has increased an average of 2.6 percent per year since 2000.
Although the official inflation rate includes many items that decline in price, such as consumer electronics, discrepancies such as that lead many economists to question whether the government is undercounting the inflation rate.

“Any housewife can tell you that the official inflation rate is just not true,â€

I just paid $3.47 for unleaded regular gas today. That's the cheapest in town!

3.17 for Un-leaded in South Florida