This is why America is financially illiterate – the 163% MSN mistake.

[i]Photo above - the median home price in America just hit $700,000. 116% inflation. Bananas shown for scale - their inflation rate was 17%[/i]

I bow to no one in my disrespect for the misinformation available from MSN. Data concocted and simplified to match the understanding of a nation which reads at the 5th grade level and is now reliant on spoken AI prompts typing stuff into Google is too difficult. Case in point: the link below, where MSN can’t calculate inflation, or even decide if the inflationary period it’s analyzing is 10 or 15 years.

Anyone reading the article would believe that inflation was EXACTLY 50% over the past 10 years. Or maybe 15 years. MSN and it’s AI prompt writers can't seem to agree on the period being analyzed. But wait – it gets WAAY worse.

The article goes on to list commonly bought items, most of which are groceries, and most of which had less than 50% inflation. Are we feeling good yet? That list has nothing to do with the overall items in the US government "consumer inflation basket.

I rejoice that gasoline is only up 23%, and bananas 17%.

If you believe the official government statistics, median (household) income is up 70%. $49K in 2010 vs $84,000 today. So great news, right? MSN should have put this in their analysis, to prove that happy days are here again. If we’re actually earning 20% more than inflation.

Except that US housing prices are up 116% ($323K average 2010 vs $704K in 2025). Soaring approximately 2X as fast as income. Geeze . . . do you think building more homes might help?

MSN should also have noted that today the national debt is 163% greater than it was in 2010. 3 times X the inflation rate, and more than twice as high as income. ($38 trillion today vs $14 trillion in 2010). I believe the correct term for this is “death spiral”. Debt growing and housing growing twice as fast as income.

If anyone running for congress in 2026 or president in 2028 has plans on how to solve these problems, please start talking about them now. I want to vote for someone with better than 5th grade reading and math skills.

I’m just sayin’ . . .



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