All of the talk earlier about inflation got me thinking. Using a few real world measures I wanted to see what the actual rate was.

 

First I checked gasoline, but depending on when you take your measurements you can get some vastly different stats. For example, if we use early 2004 until current day (about 10 years) we get about 4.5% inflation on the cost of gas over that time, but if we choose early 2005, the rate comes out under 3%, as there was a massive gas price spike in late 2004. Going by only the last few years the price has actually deflated slightly since 2011, but if you choose mid 2009 as your baseline (massive price trough) then it looks like there has been massive inflation on the level of 10% or so.

 

Going with something more durable, the MSRP of a Honda civic from 2004 to 2014 inflation comes in at about 3.3%.

 

The inflation on a bushel of wheat is about 6% over the last 10 years, of course most of the inflation in that occurred during Bush's time in office and the price has been much more flat over the last few years of Obama's administration.

 

If you're curious about how to find these numbers yourself the formula is pretty simple, inflation = ln(current price/starting price)/time period, and you can look up the values of these items and commodities on the internet.

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