Friday, 5 July 2013

Why People Think Inflation Has Soared, And That The Cost Of Bread Is Spiraling Higher

Suggest something radical like Ben Bernanke has done a good job of being Fed Chair, and invariably someone will tell you that there's tons of inflation, if only you looked at the price of bread recently.
There was an incident recently where conservative commenter Erick Erickson said there was a bunch of inflation, only to get smacked down by Paul Krugman, who rebutted him with actual facts.
So why do people insist that there's so much inflation?
Probably because they have no idea what it is.
Scott Sumner made this point last autumn:
Many people tell me that the “average people” they talk to simply don’t believe inflation rates have been low over the past 4 years, despite the headline CPI rising at roughly a 1.2% rate since July 2008.  There are three reasons for this cognitive fallacy:


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