For shits and giggles, I downloaded a CSV of annual inflation rates from the Minneapolis Fed website, a table going back to 1800.
I ranked the years according to inflation rate… #1 being 1864 with a 27% annual inflation rate, #223 being during Jefferson’s presidency, when there was a 14% deflation rate in 1802… and then asked:
What happened in those years of high inflation to make the rate go high?
Nothing occurs in a vacuum, of course. What macroeconomic event was happening in these years which would drive inflation higher?
And the answers were pretty obvious: Of the top 25 years for inflation in post-1800 American history, eighteen of them came about because of the twin demographic disasters of wars and pandemics, and the years following. Five of those years were 70s oil shock related (Sorry, Jimmy Carter!), and the other two were in 1808 (Jefferson) and 1854 (Pierce).
Eighteen of 25, or 72%. Want to keep inflation low? Don’t go to war, and don’t kill a lot of people with disease.
I alluded to this in my “commercial” for Joe Biden, but I wasn’t aware until now just how stark and obvious this relationship is: If you kill a lot of people, you disrupt supply chains, government spending goes up, and inflation rises as the cost to fight those battles, rebuild those supply chains, and repair the damage is put upon the entire economy. In short: inflation is the price we on the home front have to pay for winning the battles fought on the front lines.
So… for me… this is why I don’t “blame Biden” and is part of my daily narrative when talking about this: the inflation of 2022 was a direct result of the COVID pandemic, and there is economic history to support this contention.
Here’s the link if you want the spreadsheet:
(In the spreadsheet, I included the increasingly-seen bullshit stat of “cumulative inflation” because it was easy to do and I wanted to have those numbers available if needed. I decided to do 2, 3, and 4-year CI rankings because… why not.
Also: Biden years are highlighted in yellow.)