Inflation == increase in cost of everything?
Barack Obama:
Consider the facts. Over the last thirty years, the average earnings of American men have grown less than 1 percent after being adjusted for inflation. Meanwhile,the cost of everything, from housing to health care to education, has steadily risen. What has kept a large swatch of American familes from falling out of the middle class has been Mom’s paycheck.
Am I missing something here? Or, is the fact that the cost of everything is steadily rising what the “adjusted for inflation” is supposed to be adjusting for?
March 15th, 2008 at 12:19 am
Not missing a bloody thing. Vote McCain ’08! (heh)
In fairness, everybody makes gaffs. Hard to give 3 speeches a day for a year and not say some stupid things.
March 15th, 2008 at 7:26 am
Yeah, but it didn’t come from a speech. It came from his book, “The Audacity of Hope”.
March 17th, 2008 at 8:23 am
Oh. Well then, his editor sucks! And perhaps his depth of understanding also…
Racking my brain, I can’t think of any way of interpreting the passage so that it makes sense, heh.
That said, I do believe I’ve read that real income is increasing more slowly than inflation.
May 5th, 2008 at 10:10 am
Incidentally, this source suggests that Inflation for the poor has risen much more slowly than inflation in general:
http://faculty.chicagogsb.edu/christian.broda/website/research/unrestricted/Broda_TradeInequality.pdf
May 8th, 2008 at 6:31 pm
Interesting. So, I’ll admit, that is a 48 page paper and I pretty much stopped after the abstract. But, basically, if you look at a price index of things that low income households buy, it shows lower inflation?