It is MUCH harder for people to live. It is much harder for people to make ends meet.
But the problem is not inflation, it is a lack of wages.
We are so used to flat or declining wages that the idea of higher wages seems fantastic, and inflation is viewed as a zero-sum loss for workers. Any rise in prices must be a loss because we take flat wages as a given.
If we look at the periods where working people made real advances in quality of life they are inflationary periods. The periods when people get slaughtered are low inflation periods.
Medicine and higher education are going to go up either way because they are cartels and monopolies. They go up with or without inflation. And food and energy will go up because there is much, much more demand for food and energy from China and India.
But with low inflation wages will never go up and the average person will devote a higher and higher percentage of those stagnant wages to interest on debt.
When someone says, "We need more inflation" that is read as "we need higher milk prices."
But that is looking at one sliver of the equation.
Inflation hurts holders of debt. The bank that holds someone's mortgage at 5% made a huge bet on low inflation. The borrower made a huge bet on high inflation.
Inflation in America essentially stopped in 1982. Since that time financial firms, once considered slow but steady businesses, have increased their profits by a zillion percent, wages have been flat, income inequality has exploded and the economy has been host to a series of devastating investment/asset bubbles.
The super-rich wanted low inflation, and they got it. And the worker has been getting crucified.
No worker wants to pay more for something she needs to buy, but low inflation is very, very bad for workers and very, very good for banks.
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