So I, again, am an outlier.

Yep. That's not a bad thing, by the way. It just is what it is.

I don't talk about it much, but I am wealthy only in the friends and family I have around me. I took a financial risk mid life and it went very badly. I will never truly be able to retire. I very much notice the increase in prices because of the recent bout of inflation. And my income has barely kept pace. My biggest saving grace is that I was able to keep my house through those troubles, and although I still have a mortgage, it is a fixed cost and did not increase during the bout of inflation.

Like you, I understand that the economy, on average, is doing pretty well. But if you are below that average, you are struggling. So I can empathize with those who are at the lower end of the income spectrum. Their wages have likely not kept pace, or at best, are just now catching up, leaving them with deficits from the period when inflation rose faster than wages. So when those folks keep bringing up inflation as a problem, they're not always talking about inflation today - it's the inflation that happened in 21-23 that's really hurting them, and still hurting them today.

--Peter