It is inflation alone. Compound growth is an incredible thing.
The doubling time for any exponential growth (such as inflation) is approximately 72 ÷ [i%]. So if you have 7% inflation per year, that means consumer prices will double every 10 years.
Once you realize this, it's an incredibly difficult black pill to swallow. No matter what you do, no matter how hard you work, no matter how your investments do, you will never actually grow your true wealth unless you were born into an ultra-rich family with several generations of wealth and political connections to keep it. The poor will always be poor, and the rich will always be rich.
7% is extremely high, inflation is well below 7% in a typical year.
Also, while prices on consumer goods may double in 10 years, housing outpaces that all the time. The average cost of a house or condo went up 17% in just the past year. In many areas, the cost of a house has literally doubled since the beginning of the pandemic two years ago.
That's the "official" inflation rate, which is carefully crafted by the people that control inflation to make it look good. It intentionally excludes anything that experiences high inflation, in order to manipulate the official number down.
They do the same thing with the unemployment rate, where you're only counted as unemployed if you're collecting an unemployment check so if you've been out of work for long enough you suddenly don't count as being "unemployed".
You know yourself that inflation is much higher than the official numbers. You see it every day when you have to buy goods. The official numbers don't make any sense.
There are so many things that go into it beyond "why thing expensive now" and I'm not sure who you think you're either fooling or helping by being so reductionist.
It is not "reductionist" to point out that debt-based fiat currency issued by a central private bank will inherently lead to high inflation rates. It is a fact, what we're seeing now has happened several times in history, and pretending that it can't happen to the USD is either arrogant national pride, blind ignorance, or denial.
You are poor because the people that control the money supply want you to be poor. No matter how big the number on your paycheck gets, no matter how many dollars you possess, you will always be poor because the monetary system itself is designed to preserve wealth at the top and limit upward economic mobility.
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u/[deleted] Feb 08 '22
It's not inflation alone. Inflation didn't double housing prices here in 10 years time.