The inflation argument always starts in the wrong place.
Everyone argues about the latest price increase.
Almost nobody talks about the giant jump that already happened.
A $100 item when Trump left office in January 2021 became roughly a $121 or $122 item by the time Biden left office.
Today it costs around $128.
Yet most of the political outrage is focused on the move from $121 to $128.
The bigger jump already happened.
And here’s the part that gets forgotten.
Nobody can claim there was no warning.
In February and March 2021, Larry Summers warned that Biden’s $1.9 trillion stimulus package was too large.
Not a Republican.
Not a Fox News host.
Larry Summers.
A former Treasury Secretary under Clinton and a top Obama adviser.
He warned the package could create “inflationary pressures of a kind we have not seen in a generation.”
He called it “steps into the unknown.”
That warning aged remarkably well.
The bill passed anyway.
Inflation later surged to 40-year highs.
Prices jumped.
Rent jumped.
Food jumped.
Everything became more expensive.
And unlike a stock market correction, inflation doesn’t simply reverse itself.
The $100 item doesn’t go back to $100.
The new price becomes reality.
That is why so many Americans still feel squeezed even when inflation rates come down.
The inflation rate slowed.
The price level didn’t.
The strangest part is that the warning came from inside their own team.
They were told what could happen.
Then it happened.