This is nice talk, but have you really not bought groceries, electronics, filled up your tank or paid an electrcity/natgas bill in the past 6 months?
I certainly don't look at my heating bill every month.
But inflation is devastating to the working poor. Funny that it's so easily brushed aside by those who claim to advocate for them.
Consumer perception of the economy is roughly equivalent to 2009 numbers now, in a recent study. The public by and large thinks the economy is terrible, primarily due to the inflationary pressures.
Consider that unemployment affects the marginal job seeker, but inflation affects everybody. From a purely political lens, vying for higher employment at the expense of inflation, once past a reasonable threshold, seems like a losing move.
Source? Searching for "Consumer perception of the economy" leads me to consumer confidence index, which seems to be significantly higher than in 2009.
https://www.conference-board.org/data/consumerconfidence.cfm
If it's demand-side, then their wages should rise up together with inflation so they don't win or lose (except for whatever savings they have and whatever time it takes for wages to adjust).
So wages are rising, but slower than inflation, e.g. people getting poorer. And of course, many stay in the same job and don't get a raise, or get a paltry raise.
Many seniors living off of fixed income investments which are yielding lower than ever. And so on...
Workers are only better off if wage is strongly above inflation. I do see people cheering on wage gains, even though they've been persistently below inflation, which is a bit of a headscratcher.
It seems the public perception is finally starting to bubble up though, rather than the headline narratives.
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/06/upshot/inflation-psycholo...
I'm not arguing that inflation is good for poor people, just that "Inflation = Bad" is reductionist. There are winners and losers with inflation, and the lives of most individuals are affected in nuanced ways, both positively and negatively.
who's claiming that?
For a young family that is interested in buying a house, food/gas does not even register.
By galloping inflation, I hope that means wage increases. Inflation is neither bad nor good, until it changes people's behavior. Even then, it's not strictly bad until it spirals out of control. Until then, inflation is in many ways a good thing: higher wages, higher revenues, transferring money from creditors to debtors. These are things many people want more of.
I also know people buying cars at or close to MSRP that would have gotten them for much less before. So the sticker prices might be the same, but actual prices paid are going up.