| joelfmi |
06-10-2022 10:54 AM |
Spending has caused massive inflation and high prices on everything we purchase
Without looking at inflation-adjusted prices it is difficult to see where gasoline prices actually stand. Back in 1918 gasoline was $0.25 a gallon and by 1932 prices had fallen to 18 cents a gallon! But as we all know over the last 100 years the purchasing power of the dollar has fallen drastically. So, in order to get the true picture, we can’t just say that the lowest price of gas was 18 cents per gallon, we need to adjust the price for inflation. When adjusting for inflation there are two prices… the first is called the “nominal price” and that is the actual price you would have paid for gas at the pump i.e. 18 cents. The key price though is the inflation-adjusted price which calculates what the price would have been if we were spending current dollars on a previous date. In this case, we are basing our calculations on the value of a dollar in April 2022.
Time Traveling deLoreanIn other words, imagine taking today’s dollars and jumping into a time-traveling DeLorean and going back to a specific date in time. As you travel back in time, each dollar you bring with you shrinks based on the equivalent purchasing power of that time. The inflation-adjusted price (aka. the price in “real dollars”) is how much you would have to pay back then, using the weakened purchasing power of today’s dollar. So if overall prices have doubled over a specific time period it would take two inflation-adjusted dollars to buy something that only cost one dollar, back then.Reckless spending has caused this.
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