Karl W. Smith, Columnist

No, Inflation Is Not Actually Lower Than the Government Says

The US economy is looking increasingly gloomy, despite the many valiant attempts to argue otherwise.

October 19, 2022 at 10:30 AM UTC

Karl W. Smith is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist. Previously, he was vice president for federal policy at the Tax Foundation and assistant professor of economics at the University of North Carolina.

More expensive than they used to be.
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With the midterm elections approaching, President Joe Biden has little choice but to talk up the economy. Unfortunately, the economy is looking increasingly gloomy, despite the many valiant attempts to argue otherwise.

The first (and most wishful) argument is that inflation, far from setting a 40-year record, is already falling: specifically, that a lag in reporting the data is obscuring the fact that inflation is lower than the government says. This is what Paul Krugman means when he criticizes “official measures of inflation.”