Inflation. A needed primer.

Seeing as I see so many posts, some from people running for office on this, a reminder.

Inflation going down just means the rate of inflation, goes down.  Prices still rise, just more slowly.

The U.S. Government targets inflation to be at about 2%.  It's 2.4% right now, which is basically a return to the pre Covid rate of inflation.  It goes up a little and down a little.

Personally, I don't like it that the government targets inflation for a perpetual slight rate.  I think the ideal rate is 0%.  Economist dispute that, but I'm not an economist, except in the amature, and distributist, sense.

Some people, such as Jimmy Akin, blame the government for inflation itself, and to some extent that's warranted.  But the recent inflationary cycle reflects world events, a war in Europe's grain belt between to oil producing entities being a big part of that.  Ironically, recent drops in the rate of inflation have been partially caused by Iran being a menace.

Anyhow, politicians who keep suggesting that "prices will go down" if they are elected are either lying or economically ignorant.

Prices can go down, of course, and for a variety of reasons. Technological advances cause the price of some things to go down, although they cause the price of some durables to go up.  Political actions can impact the price of things, but it tends to only occur very moderately over a prolonged period of time, or due to something dramatic, like deregulation of a very heavily regulated industry, or like busting up a big monopoly.

When prices really go down, that's deflation.  Not a decrease in inflation.  Once again, a decrease of inflation means that prices still rise, just not as much over a given period of time.  Deflation means they actually drop.

Deflation is pretty rare in a healthy economy and when it occurs in a healthy economy, it tends to only be for a month or so.  A general prolonged deflation only occurs in a depression. 

Depressions cause deflations.  People are out of work, so they don't have money, so they don't buy things, so prices drop.

And there you have it.