The thing that bugs me to no end when talking about inflation in an historical context, is that everyone forgets to consider how the indexes of consumption it's calculated from (PCEPI, CPI, etc.) are NOT static, and very arbitrarily are changed over time, often to make inflation seem lower than it actually is for the consumer.
Overall, historical comparisons of inflation numbers are so imprecise to be practically worthless the longer the timescale. You can expect the real figure to be much greater in reality for consumers, given the political incentive to lie over inflation data.
Overall, historical comparisons of inflation numbers are so imprecise to be practically worthless the longer the timescale. You can expect the real figure to be much greater in reality for consumers, given the political incentive to lie over inflation data.