Perhaps someone should explain the shockingly radical concepts of "taxes" and "absence of competition in government-supported institutions" to this M.W. person.
A friend of mine who had lived in the Northeast moved to Florida a few months ago and she cannot believe how much more expensive everything there is. Her first trip to a Florida Walmart and it cost her $150 for what had been costing her $80 up north. For me, the real cheat became apparent when I picked up a 16-ounce Polly-O mozzarella block at a nearby grocery chain. It is now $7.99 for that one-pound block that had cost $4.38 for years. Here is the where the cheat was uncovered - I went to Costco, and the same Polly-O mozzarella is two pounds for $3.99. I understand Costco has pricing advantages, but hard to believe that that small regional chain isn't using the "inflation" story to take advantage of their customers. I'm a capitalist and I'm an entrepreneur. But you'll never convince me that much of this "inflation" is anything but pure old-fashioned price gouging by corporations of all sizes. Also, look at the one everyone is talking about - gasoline. Compare crude and gasoline futures to retail gas prices and explain why the price at the pump jumped 70 cents a gallon and stuck while neither crude nor gas futures came close to approaching their prior highs of the early months of the Putin attack on Ukraine.
That part, at least, is a bit odd. I live in FL, and my food bills haven't changed but slightly. Of course, I only buy fairly basic stuff - I enjoy cooking, and veggies, rice, chicken, and pork are the biggest items on the list - so I may not be the best demographic for that. Heavily processed foods have probably jumped a good bit.
Just a basic study of their systems should suffice to back up my claims. And just a few counter examples suffice to prove that the relationship does not hold as you claimed...
My, what an odd deja vu experience. I once turned on a light in a (rather high end) hotel room late at night only to see a huge palmetto bug skitter away into some dark corner. It did, however, pause and look at me - with an expression that conveyed exactly your attitude. A relative of yours, perhaps? Or was that you, chasing me in the hopes of sniffing my underwear even then? Go back to your miserable existence behind the sink, small furtive thing. The yawning hole in your soul due to the lack of love in your life will not be resolved even if you do get to my leg and attempt to hump it.
Oh... you caught me. How shall I live now? Guess you'd better report it so it can be taken care of. I'll just go back to making those Destriero-level returns and await my punishment.
Love it! Oh, the self-panickers among us... There are some really odd relationships in the world. A certain type of Cordyceps mushroom that only grows from the heads of cicadas that are buried by digger wasps... 60-foot long tapeworms... M.W.'s loathsome but irresistible tropism whenever it senses my pants leg... And yet there are people who claim that evolution means "improvement". Bizarre, I call it.