US Inflation Spiked 8.6%, Highest in 40-Years — Economist Says We’re Not ‘Seeing Any Signs That We’re in the Clear’

After April’s consumer price index (CPI) report was published, a number of American economists and bureaucrats said that inflation had peaked and it was possible that inflation would subside. However, statistics from the U.S. Labor Department indicate the CPI increased 8.6% from a year earlier, as the month of May’s inflation data reached another lifetime high.

CPI Data From May Shows Inflation Has Not Peaked

The U.S. economy doesn’t look so hot these days and after shutting down the economy over a respiratory virus and printing trillions of dollars in stimulus, it seems these ideas were huge mistakes. Inflation is the general increase in the cost of goods and services, and currencies like the U.S. dollar can’t buy as many goods and services as they could when inflation was lower. Reports show that nearly everything in the supermarkets now has a higher cost and the prices of things like rent, gasoline, cars, and housing have skyrocketed. Prices of goods and services continued to rise even though politicians told the public inflation would be “transitory.”

When April’s CPI data was published, some people even claimed that inflation had “peaked,” but the latest CPI data from May shows this claim did not come to fruition. U.S. inflation data from the Labor Department’s metrics indicate that last month’s CPI hit a 40-year high at 8.6%. Inflation has been so bad in the U.S. that the stimulus checks, expanded child-tax credits, extended unemployment benefits, and even the slight rise in wages have been erased by the rising costs of goods and services.

The Labor Department’s metrics show that rising food, gas, and energy prices have pushed the CPI data higher and shelter costs were one of the largest contributors to last month’s inflation data hike. So while a slight rise in wages has taken place for some U.S. workers, real wages dropped 0.6% from April. Economists who noted that April’s data was ‘peak inflation’ are starting to notice that the cost of goods and services keeps peaking. Morning Consult’s chief economist, John Leer said that May’s CPI was upsetting.

“It’s hard to look at May’s inflation data and not be disappointed,” Leer explained on June 10. “We’re just not yet seeing any signs that we’re in the clear.”

‘It Might Not Have Been a Good Idea to Shut Down the Economy for a Respiratory Virus’

Meanwhile, U.S. president Joe Biden continues to blame Russia and Vladimir Putin. “Today’s inflation report confirms what Americans already know — Putin’s price hike is hitting America hard,” Biden stressed at a press conference this week. However, many people are saying that shutting down the U.S. economy, the lockdowns, and the Covid-19 stimulus bills were horrible ideas. “I’m beginning to think it might not have been a good idea to shut down the economy for a respiratory virus,” the economist Jeffrey Tucker wrote on Friday.

U.S. representative Thomas Massie, a Republican from Kentucky, has been sharing statements he made back in 2020 when he said it was not the greatest idea to pass the massive stimulus bill. In January, Massie said: “Too many people failed to see the bill being passed would cause massive inflation, its passage without members present would set the tone for nationwide mail-in ballots, the money would enable all of the lockdowns, and paying people not to work would kill productivity in the U.S.” Yet, many critics gave Massie a hard time about his contrarian statements and resorted to ad hominem attacks.

“Massie just says whatever stupid thing pops in his head,” one individual wrote in response to Massie’s tweet at the time. The Kentucky representative recently fired back at the individual’s comment and said this “tweet did not age well.”

In 2020, Democrat senator John Kerry said “Congressman Massie has tested positive for being an a**hole.” The Kentucky representative also decided to mock Kerry’s tweet and remarked that he predicts “Democrats will sequester John Kerry and his energy-price-hiking dogma in a rock formation until at least November.” Massie added:

Here’s his doltish tweet when I opposed the first $2 trillion printing spree on March 27, 2020 – because it was going to cause inflation .

Massie was not the only one that opposed the trillion-dollar monetary expansion as the gold bug and economist Peter Schiff was quick to criticize those who supported the stimulus. On the same day as John Kerry’s tweet in March 2020, Schiff wrote: “As the Fed will create all this money out of thin air the people will pay the cost through inflation. Consumer prices are about to soar, wiping out the savings of millions of Americans, and destroying the purchasing power of wages for millions more.”