Ummm...Yeah. You know what, Inflation isn't your worry.
Wage Stagnation and Housing Costs are.

Let's put things in perspective.

In 1975, my dad was a butcher. We bought a house on his salary alone. He was able to save enough to buy a summer home in New Hampshire, which we had until it burned down some years later. My mom did not work outside the home.

Now, if you're working as a butcher in a grocery store today, I don't think a single-family detached home is in reach, much less an EXTRA home.

Fast forward.

1980 to 2004, U.S. gross domestic product per person rose by almost two-thirds, the wages of the average worker fell after adjusting for inflation in the same time period.

Over the three decades from 1972 to 2001, the wages and salaries of even those Americans at the 90th percentile (those doing better than 90 percent of their fellow citizens) experienced income gains of only 1 percent a year on average.
I was once in this group of income gainers in real, inflation-adjusted dollars. I am not anymore. Each year, I see my salary growing slower than my expenses - and I earn "good money" by most standards, but I know, in my heart, that my lifestyle is slipping.

But those at the 99.9th percentile - meaning they earn more than 99.9% of all others - saw their income rise by 181 percent over these same years (to an income averaging almost $1.7 million).

Those at the 99.99th percentile - a group of a few thousand that includes Warren Buffet, Bill Gates, Steve Jobs and so on...had income growth of 497 percent.

Inflation is, on the whole, fairly contained. At a current rate of 2.72% it's modest and able to be sustained.

However, as we grow more an more efficient, squeezing more and more productivity out of each worker, the gains are not being shared with employees.

Most of us - except those on government programs like soldiers and congress critters - will never have a defined pension - because they were replaced with the casino-culture 401(k) in the late 1970's.

In fact, I think that this is my biggest worry - not inflation, but the fact that, eventually, the Chinese crap they sell at Wal-Mart will reach some lower limit of "manufacutrability" cost and that your average American worker with an income of $40,208 just won't be able to buy stuff they need (forget "want" - I'm talking about basic here). In real dollars, the cost of goods and food has come way down from when I was a kid. WAY down. But even with these drops in prices, wages have not kept up.

I am very close to two people who have gone off the "wage cliff" so to speak - they work more than one job, they are hardly slackers in any sense. The work they do is, in one case semi-skilled and in the other, requires an expensive license.

Both of them are desperately poor, I mean poor like when I get a deer, I cut it up and give it to them. Poor like the heat is off in most of the house and poor like they are forgoing all medical care.

And they are working - but they don't get paid a living wage.

We're way off into the political woods here, but if you're talking long-term issues, your ability to earn a living if you actually have a job is the main concern, not inflation.