That's putting it mildly. I lived better 15 years ago making $40k less than I do now. Price increases for consumer goods, energy, food, and property taxes in the last four years have been especially brutal!
Now many argue "well raises should be higher than inflation" but data continues to show that this isn't the case, as mentioned in the top of the article, for the last 50 years or so, raises have not kept pace with real cost of living increases. I have seen an argument that raises have evened out somewhat to beat the official inflation rate, but this is dubious, because the reported government inflation rate has exclusions to its calculation and doesn't capture the real cost of living increases faced across the US, due to inflation rate calculation exclusions and approaches.
I've long argued we need some kind of deflation in real costs, what that would look like is hard for me to say. I know its complicated, however I think a good place to start is perhaps returning to pre Reagan era economic 'reforms' is a good first step, as I've seen mentioned elsewhere (on HN or otherwise), as so called 'Reaganomics' hasn't really panned out for the average American over the long term.
The admonition from the Reagan administration on economics was fairly simple: Lower the rates, broaden the base. We've not been doing that for a long time.
You're welcome to check an alternate metric (eg Truflation), but they're all quite similar to CPI.
You are welcome.
Any why would GGP mention food, cars, and energy? They are directly included in the CPI. I think it's more likely that GGP is under the false impression that these items are excluded from the CPI -- It's a conspiracy theory originating from economists' practice of using "CPI Excluding Food, Shelter, Energy, and Used Cars and Trucks" as a lower-variance estimate of the future inflation rate.
> You are welcome.
Skip the snark, it's against HN guidelines.
Even in the '80s they knew this current world would be the outcome. This isn't a surprise to the Fed or the Reaganites.