Here are 179 reasons you shouldn't panic.
Have you heard a lot about inflation lately? Perhaps an unusual amount? If you follow the news regularly, chances are high that you have. Inflation — best defined as an increase in the price of goods and services — spent most of the 2010s in the background of mainstream economic discourse, trumped by fights about Wall Street, inequality, consumer protection, federal debt and taxes. |
But now, for the first time in almost a generation, inflation concerns are so widespread that they warrant front page news. Inflation chatter is on our social media feeds. It's a lead segment on network morning news shows. If you're like me, even your most apolitical friends — those who tune into current events only during presidential elections — are bringing up their inflation worries, fearing that they'll lose their purchasing power as consumers, that their hard-earned dollars might not go as far. But just how concerned should we be? |
Throughout the spring, I edited essays that neatly responded to the monthly government reports about inflation as investors and consumers reacted to the headline numbers. But we also wanted to publish an ambitious article by summer's end that steps back and tries to answer not only that question of how worried we should be, but also breaks down in great detail (without being a bore) what exactly we're talking about when we talk about inflation, a term that too often is thrown around without much exploration. |
So I reached out to Joshua Bivens, the director of research at the Economic Policy Institute, a progressive think tank, and connected him with my colleague Stuart Thompson, Times Opinion's graphics editor. As a fair-minded and rigorous scholar who shapes his work around finding out what's best for regular people, Bivens was the perfect expert to work with us on a graphics-infused essay that aims to explain without flattening the many layers of complexity within the roughly $21 trillion U.S. economy. |
I won't give away too much of Bivens's article — the explanatory journey he brings you on as you scroll is worth taking step by step. |
But, as he writes, "it's worth breaking down this year's inflation data in granular detail, then asking whether the price increases we've seen merit the very tough medicine — slower growth and higher unemployment — that would result from the stricter monetary policy that some financial commentators now recommend." |
Here's what we're focusing on today: |
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