[SteveMitchell]

Originally Posted by bobbyw8469

I can't add anything to this conversation without someone making it political. So I won't say anything. However, something HAS to change.

Without specifically being political, many problems we are confronting today stem, at least in part, from political action. Inflation itself (which has been debated many times in my lifetime) IS a function of government. Price increases (or decreases) are generally reflections of a free market responding to a distorted money supply which, again, is a function of government or approved agencies (such as the FED). Our elected officials have distanced themselves (to varying degrees for decades) from the U.S. Constitution to the point that today's dollar (quite literally) buys what pennies purchased when T206's were issued. A mere 2% inflation rate devalues our dollars considerably within just a few years and given that the Consumer Price Index (CPI) no longer includes such fundamentals as food and energy, what can such government figures truly mean? If CPI were calculated as it was during an earlier great inflation (the 1970s), the official government numbers would be, as has been mentioned by others, 4X to 5X today's "official" figures.