The MMT Queen will come up with a reason why the chart doesn't show what it shows, and Krugman and his NY Times buddies will agree.

you're telling me???

In theory I fully support what Bob is saying. It is completely logical and makes total sense.

However, I distrust the official CPI numbers to such a degree (combined with my anecdotal experience), that I'm not sure if its worked as well as Bob says. Its quite possible that the truth is somewhere in the middle of Murphy - Kelton in this case.

To add: The biggest driver here seems to be federal fiscal policy, since they are the single biggest spender in the economy. High interest rates have seemingly done nothing to curb their spending. In fact, it has seemed to accelerate it. They don't even seem to 'care' that they are borrowing money to pay bond interest at this point. Its not even a talking point anymore.

Why fret so much over these false assumptions from state monkeys? They are there to throw a plastic banana towards us!

It may be that these are just urban consumers, non-urban consumers have all been shifted to Mars as according to Fed.