Economists put out charts. Politicians put out talking points. But inflation is told in grocery aisles. A carton of eggs, once background noise, now takes up the whole conversation.
Families don’t quote indexes. They quote receipts. “It used to be $120. Now it’s $160, and I bought less.”
The cruelest part isn’t the price spike itself, but the normalization. After months of watching numbers creep upward, people stop being shocked. They sigh, swipe, and move on, telling themselves this is just the way it is now. That resignation is inflation’s real victory.
It isn’t transitory. It isn’t temporary. It’s the erosion of expectation. And once expectation shifts, wages and politics follow.