I'm Brian Lerer. This is my daily politics podcast from WNYC Studios. It's Thursday, November 18th.

So have you been experiencing more sticker shock lately? Maybe your grocery bill has gone up or the cost of a rental car

wasn't worth the trip upstate. Even if you don't drive, you've likely heard about soaring gasoline

prices as a grim indicator of high inflation. But what exactly is inflation? What's causing it to rise

and will these increases last? Over the last year, this is the stat that has everybody talking,

over the last year, the United States has experienced an annual inflation rate of 6.2%.

So prices on average in general, of the things they measure, which is in everything,

but of the things they measure, 6% increase over the last year,

October to October, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. They measure what's called the

consumer price index or CPI, which looks at the average change in prices that people pay for

goods and services. We've talked on the show in the past about things

left out of the CPI when we used to say there was low inflation. It didn't take your cost of housing

into account. It didn't take the cost of a college education into account. So there's probably

always more inflation on the big ticket items than we have tended to officially talk about in the media, but now the day-to-day

stuff is going up and people are freaking out. So for reference, inflation rates in the past few

years on these things have hovered around 2%, which is closer to where the Federal Reserve

wants to see it, although there's no

official target.

We haven't seen a yearly jump like this, like I said, in the last three decades.

But you know what else we haven't seen in 30 years?

A global pandemic, right?

Where people stayed home and started spending more on goods than services. Remember when you

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