Are They Lying to Us About Inflation?

 https://www.lewrockwell.com/2025/08/eric-peters/are-they-lying-to-us-about-inflation/

 I have written before about my first house, which I bought back in the mid-1990s in Northern Virginia for $155k. Today, that same house would list for more than $600k, according to my realtor friend who sells similar houses in the same neighborhood. Now, here’s a way to more accurately measure what they’re lying to us about.

When I plug what I paid for my first house into the government’s so-called “inflation calculator,” it says that $155k back then is equivalent in cost to just shy of $315 today. Whey then is a house like my old house a $600k house today? What accounts for the nearly $300k difference in cost?

Channeling the Church Lady: Could it be . . . inflation? That is to say, the waning value of what a dollar buys today vs. yesterday?

It sure seems that way.

Eating at McDonald’s has become a kind of near-luxury dining experience that the parents of today’s teens are having a time paying for. How many 17-year-olds can afford a $40 bag of fast food? How many can afford a car, at all? How many adults can afford their first house? If the stats are correct – about the average of first-time home buyers being well into middle aged – then the answer is not many.

Yes, they are lying to us, again.

As Dr. Evil used to say, it’s what they do.