You can't take the official inflation numbers at face value. If you look at real inflation it's been closer to 4-5% a year since 2009.

Which means if you had $100,000 in cash under your mattress in 2009, you can now generally buy half as much with it. Less in education, healthcare. More in consumer tech. About half in Big Macs or housing.

Source: https://www.lynalden.com/inflation/

It's too late to edit this now, but broad money supply increased at 5% per year. Official CPI says that broad prices rose by about 2.5% per year on average since 1990, while the source I linked thinks there’s a good case that it’s closer to 3% or more. In other words, prices went up more like 150% (2.5x) rather than 100% (2x) in total during that three decade compounded annual period.

4-5% annualized inflation would be crazy - but some things have gone up more than that. If your a young person starting out in need of an education and a home - you'll see more than 3% inflation for yourself personally.

> If you look at real inflation it's been closer to 4-5% a year since 2009.

No, it has not:

* https://awealthofcommonsense.com/2021/01/inflation-truthers/

Given that GDP growth has averaged 2% per year, if inflation was 4-5% that would mean the US economy was having 2-3% deflation in real terms.

During the economic devastation of 2009 there was negative 0.35% inflation. Can you imagine what kind of economic apocalypse would occur with negative 2%?

What you are saying makes no sense whatsoever.

> Given that GDP growth has averaged 2% per year, if inflation was 4-5% that would mean the US economy was having 2-3% deflation in real terms.

Pedantic, but the that would be “contraction” not “deflation”. (Contraction = declining real output, deflation = declining nominal prices.)

Yes, sorry my memory betrayed me. It's about 3%/year over the last 30 years according to the source. I posted a correction.

> It’s like people think monetary policy either only happens in the past or only happens in one direction.

You can make a very strong argument that monetary policy for the last 20 years has has little effect on CPI and strong effects on asset prices.

> You can make a very strong argument that monetary policy for the last 20 years has has little effect on CPI and strong effects on asset prices.

If you disagree with policymakers about what the likely course of inflation would have been without the policy intervention, maybe, but I've yet to see anyone make the argument for that disagreement, just assert it as if it were an undisputable fact. So, yeah, if you assume the deflation QE was ddsigned to fight would not have happened without QE, then you are forced to conclude that the low with-QE inflation meant QE didn’t cause inflation beyond what would have existed without it. But that’s largely just assuming the conclusion.

Here's what indisputable: If you gift money to bondholders, bond prices will go up. If you gift money to food buyers, the price of food will go up.