When the housing bubble was in the process of waxing, I kept watching the value of our house going up and up. All the while, its size and the quarter acre on which it stands remained the same. Nevertheless, we felt good about it and felt ourselves to be inordinately fortunate and well off.
When Argentina experienced serious inflation back in the '70's - when a carton of American cigarettes cost the equivalent of 30 cents - they pegged all their financial transactions on the value of a gallon of gas as defined by the American dollar (which was seen to be the bedrock of fiscal integrity).
Inflation in a currency is a sign of 'value' being sucked out of it. Only the productive sector of an economy produces ‘value’. Government and government-sponsored entitlements (directed to the undeserving) dilute the value of the currency - as does money printed on government printing presses. As you're watching things costing more and more, don't think of it that way. Think of it as the dollar buying less and less. Though it comes out to the same thing, there's a significant distinction in how we look at it. The former engenders visions of greed and corruption - a failure of the private sector; capitalism - whereas the latter points to a failure of government policy.
Excesses in the private sector will always diminish in the course of normally occurring cycles. Government excess can seldom be slowed; never reversed. Once voters decide to abandon their civic duty with regard to voting in elections (or casting their vote lightly), government excess spreads like a cancer unchecked throughout the system - and the system dies.
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