Inflation Is Everyone’s Fault and Washington Hopes You Are Too Busy Arguing to Notice

68 Months and Counting

Let me be direct with you. The Federal Reserve has now gone 68 months without hitting its own 2% inflation target. Not close. Not in the neighborhood. Not even a polite wave from across the street. The October inflation report came in above 4% year over year, wage gains landed at 3.1%, and the government could not even get the numbers out on time because of complications from last year’s shutdown. This is the institution in charge of managing the most powerful economy on earth.

What do you say to that? I genuinely want to know what the Fed thinks it is accomplishing, because from where I sit, the answer is nothing.

Your Buying Power Has Been Quietly Robbed

Here is a tool I want you to use. Go to CPIinflation.com. Type in $100,000 for January 2020. Compare it to October 2026. The result? That same $100,000 now needs to be $130,832.92 to buy what it bought in 2020.

That is not a statistic. That is your grocery bill. Your electric bill. Your rent. Your medical copay. Your airline ticket home for the holidays. Every single one of those things costs more, and the people responsible for controlling that are still collecting paychecks and giving press conferences about how they are monitoring the situation.

Meanwhile:

• Food prices at home and away from home are still climbing
• Electricity costs continue rising despite claims of an energy boom
• Medical care expenses are heading in one direction only
• Rent remains punishing for anyone who does not already own property
• Airfares are not coming down anytime soon

The Bipartisan Scam Nobody Wants to Admit

Here is where I am going to make some people uncomfortable, and I genuinely do not care. If you are still blaming your inflation problem on the other political party, you are either not paying attention or you are being played.

Look at the actual numbers from the past 10 years:

• Government spending is up 92%
• Tax collection is up 65%

That 27-point gap is not a Republican problem or a Democrat problem. It is a Washington problem. It is a both-parties-have-been-spending-money-they-do-not-have problem. We are sitting at nearly $41 trillion in national debt heading into Christmas. Proposed spending cuts got shelved. Foreign entanglements continue draining resources. And the loudest voices on both sides want you focused on culture war fights instead of your own shrinking bank account.

I am calling it what it is. This is a collective failure of governance, sold to the public as partisan drama so nobody has to take actual accountability.

What You Should Be Doing Instead of Arguing Online

I am not interested in your political team loyalty. I am interested in whether you are going to be okay financially. So here is what actually matters right now:

• If your income has not risen more than 30% since January 2020, you are poorer than you were. Full stop.
• The government’s inflation data is late, incomplete, and understated. Make decisions based on what you actually spend, not what the CPI claims.
• Debt at $41 trillion does not resolve itself painlessly. The people without a financial plan will absorb the most pain when the reckoning arrives.
• Stop waiting for a political solution. One is not coming from either side.

The jagged little pill here is that inflation is not being done to you by one party. It is being done to you by a system both parties built together while you were busy cheering for your team. The smartest thing you can do right now is stop watching the game and start protecting yourself.