Inflation, explained: Why prices keep going up and who's to blame

Confused about inflation? You're not alone. Inflation is, paradoxically, both incredibly simple to understand and absurdly complicated.

Let's start with the simplest version: Inflation happens when prices broadly go up. That "broadly" is important: At any given time, the price of goods will fluctuate based on shifting tastes. Someone makes a viral TikTok about brussels sprouts and suddenly everyone's gotta have them; boom, sprouts prices go up. Meanwhile, sellers of cauliflower, last season's trendy veg, are practically giving their goods away. Such fluctuations are constant. Inflation, however, occurs when the average price of virtually everything consumers buy goes up. Food, houses, cars, clothes, toys, etc. To afford those necessities, wages have to rise, too. It's not a bad thing. In the United States, for the past 40 years or so (and particularly this century), we've been living in an ideal low-and-slow level of inflation that comes with a well-oiled consumer-driven economy, with prices going up around 2% a year, if that. Sure, prices on some things, like housing and health care, are much higher than they used to be, but other things, like computers and TVs, have become much cheaper — so the average of all the things combined has been relatively stable. Read more...

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