Conquered and captivated under illusions maintained, a people kept in silence by smartly-dressed edicts and articles of shame — the clever comptrollers and dutiful deceivers, their methods are madness with ends much the same. The methods used to support every claim, the issues described squeezed into a single frame, to suit their grand strategy in their sheer political game.
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Apart from the ever-changing calculus around the basket of goods and the suite of hedonic adjustments, one thing I find strange about the discussion around the matter of inflation is that (in addition to the proper definition of ‘inflation’, and thus the proper method for measuring it and gauging its effects) nobody ever seems to talk about this: the fact that, as the base (whether prices or the money supply) increases, the percentage change may shrink (or appear relatively small) while the actual gains (in prices or money supply) are rather significant.
The following demonstrates the point: whereas 10 units would represent 10 percent of 100 units, 15 units would represent 3 percent of 500 units. In the latter case of measuring inflation, the 3 percent change looks better on a percentage basis, yet the overall gain is 5 units higher than in the first case. So, just as is the case when comparing property tax “rates” between states, any focus on percentages creates a distraction beneficial to government actors always seeking to reframe the issues.
This is particularly problematic because changes in wages tend to trail changes in prices (or changes to the money supply); in other words, wages are stickier than the prices we pay for goods and services. And this is especially troubling where there has been a surge in general prices (or a surge in the money supply) in excess of the rate of change in median wages; whereafter, a comparison on the basis of percentages will do a disservice to the actual discrepancies experienced in the market — in the form of prices continually outstripping wages, even despite comparable percentage gains after the surge. It is in this way that government actors use sleight of hand, with the help of mathematics and statistics, in order to keep the people thinking that what they know ain’t so — whereby the people are presented with an alternate reality completely separate from the one which they inhabit. And all too often this presents a discrepancy which they are often too ill-equipped or too afraid to scrutinize: whether for a lack of technical knowledge or for a fear of appearing foolish or becoming the subject of ridicule or retaliation, the people generally keep quiet and adapt, tolerating the discrepancies between that which they can see with their own eyes and that which they are told to see and believe.
These very dynamics are nowhere more applicable than in the present case of ‘inflation’, as reported ‘officially’ by people, in the one camp, who don’t know what they’re talking about, and, in another, who benefit from the false reporting or misrepresentation of the facts. Indeed, despite the relatively tame headline numbers as of late, the ‘official’ inflation figures belie the truth: money supply growth from 2020 through 2025 paints a rather stark picture of how dramatically the American economy was flooded with liquidity during the lockdowns, and that picture reveals just what reality is being disguised by design or by the mere misinterpretation of data. In 2020, the M2 money supply surged by an unprecedented 25.1 percent, while M1 and M0 also experienced similarly extreme increases: 24.7 percent and 22.6 percent, respectively. These were not moderate changes but extraordinary measures in response to the lockdowns, aimed at ‘stabilizing’ the economy (or at maintaining the illusion of a sustainable system). The years that followed (2021-2025) showed a gradual slowing on a percentage basis, with M2 growth averaging 6 percent by 2025, but this still represents a continued rise from an already swollen base, and thus a dramatic increase indeed.
Since 2020, the absolute levels of money circulating in the economy have been far higher than pre-pandemic times, so even relatively smaller percentage increases in subsequent years still reflect substantial absolute growth in the money supply — the same applies to any data set (including the PCE or the CPI) where the base has also been swollen.
This is where ShadowStats comes in. Using the traditional method of calculating consumer prices (before adjustments like substitution and hedonic changes were made in the ‘official’ CPI), ShadowStats reported a 9.5 percent inflation rate for 2025; in this case (as with government reporting), ‘inflation’ refers not to the expansion of the money supply (its original definition) but to an increase in consumer prices. This contrasts sharply with the official government inflation figures, which, due to the adjusted CPI methods, are (intentionally, and by design) much lower. In other words, while the official rate might seem more contained, the real cost of living (more accurately reported by ShadowStats) is far more severe.
To counteract this, the Federal Reserve raised interest rates (the cost of capital) by 2 percent in 2025 in a rather symbolic effort at combating inflation and stabilizing the economy. However, the enormous increase in the monetary base since 2020 meant these measures had to contend with deep-rooted inflationary forces, and that the measures are outmatched by the problems so wildly misunderstood and misrepresented.
In short, while the percentage increases in 2025 seem more moderate compared to the extraordinary jumps of 2020 and 2021, the massive increases in the basis of the money supply mean that these later percentage increases are still very significant, contributing to ongoing inflationary concerns that are wildly misunderstood and misrepresented when measuring them on an annual percentage basis. Of course, that is the whole intention of the members of the state: to keep the people none the wiser to the schemes used to control them, their labor and their property.
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