Sneakflation or Lieflation? You Decide

The consumer price index is up 38% from 2000.  Do you earn 38% more than you did in 2000? If so, congratulations; most people can’t answer “yes.”


Urban-area rents are up 56% from 2000. 

State and local government taxes are up 75% since 2000. And this doesn’t even include the rip-off fishing license fees that have gone through the roof, the boat registration fees that have shot to the moon, and the legal-looting parking ticket that used to be $12 and is now $60.  Note: Taxes naturally rise with the economic expansion due to rising population, which has gone up about 13.8% since 2000: 281 million to 320 million in 2015. 

 The price index for college tuition grew by nearly 80 percent between August 2003 and August 2013. Now to make this apples to apples with the rest of the data here, we need to add in the nearly 5 missing years: from 1/1/2000 to 8/1/2003 and from 8/1/2013 to 8/1/2015. 

Excerpted from  Charles Hugh Smith at The Daily Reckoning