inflation’s causes are to be found in the government increasing the supply of money and credit to fuel general demand for goods and services—to an extent that exceeds the economy's productive capacities. This is the culprit. This is why it feels like we’re paying more for less. //

All of which underscores the all-important point that neither businesses nor the Russian president nor greedy hedge-fund managers nor greedy tech barons nor greedy CEOs nor mean, politically incorrect people who don’t employ the correct hashtags print money. The federal government does that.

So let’s be clear: politicians, who are not very good at much, are supremely good at deflecting blame. And that’s what this is. This shouldn’t come as a surprise. The same people who underreport inflation’s impact on Americans shouldn’t be expected to acknowledge that it was their decisions that landed us in hot water in the first place. Unfortunately, it is those people—the policymaking failures who run the government—who are now charged with getting us out of it.