Inflation Comes in Higher Than Expected in Least-Surprising News Ever

To the dismay of the Biden administration, the (Biden)flation numbers aren’t cooling off ahead of the 2024 election. 

As CNBC reported: 

Inflation rose again in February, keeping the Federal Reserve on course to wait at least until the summer before starting to lower interest rates.

The consumer price index [CPI], a broad measure of goods and services costs, increased 0.4% for the month and 3.2% from a year ago, the Labor Department’s Bureau of Labor Statistics reported Tuesday. The monthly gain was in line with expectations, but the annual rate was slightly ahead of the 3.1% forecast from the Dow Jones consensus.

Excluding volatile food and energy prices, the core CPI rose 0.4% on the month and was up 3.8% on the year. Both were one-tenth of a percentage point higher than forecast.

For reference, the Federal Reserve targets 2% inflation.

CNBC’s Rick Santelli, best known for an on-air rant in 2009 that spawned the Tea Party movement, further explained that “if you look at two things that we don’t normally talk about, if you look at the non-seasonally adjusted consumer price index itself, or the seasonally adjusted core index, those indexes are at new all time highs today. They are almost every month. So your middle class looks at that, and the inflation compared to 2017, 2018, 2019, is significantly higher. The rate of change is what the fed is looking at, and the rate of change, no matter how you slice it, looks like two percent.” 

The official CPI statistics show cumulative inflation of nearly 20% since Joe Biden took office, though this seems impossible to believe. Speaking purely anecdotally, it’s difficult to think of anything that’s increased by less than 20% since Biden took office. 

Additionally, the CPI doesn’t take shrinkflation into account. 

According to a report from Sen. Bob Casey (which incorrectly blames the shrinkflation phenomenon on corporate greed, not Bidenomics), countless everyday items have been shrinking in size while the prices remain constant or increase. To give just a few examples; Smart Balance reduced the amount of vegetable oil in their packaging by 40%, a box of cocoa puffs has 6% less product by weight, Gatorade’s 32oz bottle has been replaced by a 28oz bottle (a 12.5% decrease), Charmin has reduced their 264 sheet roll package to 244 (an 8% decrease), and Walmart’s Great Value paper towels decreased from 168 two-ply sheets per roll to 120 (a nearly 30% decrease).   

Those are just a handful of examples, but anyone that’s been to a grocery store has noticed countless more, and none of that is taken into account in the inflation statistics. 

Matt Palumbo is the author of Fact-Checking the Fact-Checkers: How the Left Hijacked and Weaponized the Fact-Checking Industry and The Man Behind the Curtain: Inside the Secret Network of George Soros

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