The last 3.5 years have also screwed with peoples' sense of time, it's really common to see measures that normally get compared year-to-year instead get compared to 2019.

Yes. But in fairness, inflation was basically zero for a decade before that. So it's kind of "since inflation (re)started", which makes a kind of sense, even though it's hard to compare to all the reported figures, which are annual.

Let me assure you that people not understanding extremely basic economics come from all walks of life.

In fact, I was just listening to a random, she must’ve been 60 year old woman and her mother in a waiting room rant about “how is prices going up with inflation going down”.

I’ve been working for 20 odd years now and still have coworkers who started the day I did rant “these fucking forced union wage increases! Don’t they know that I’ll hit a new tax bracket and then take home less money than before!”

These people are 40+ years old. They should know better.

The misconception of tax brackets is also frustrating. Tax brackets are marginal. If a tax bracket cutoff is, say, 10% at 100k, and you cross it to 110k, only 10k is taxed at 10%. The other 100k is taxed as before.