She doesn’t have to do her own shopping. I went to buy a bottle of coffee creamer. It had a price hanger that said Price Drop. It was 4.29, and the listed price was 4.99. Just last week, it was 3.99. I buy this stuff all the time. Take bacon. It is almost 6.00 a pound. Five years ago, you could get a pound of bacon for 1.99. Hamburger, 20% fat, is 3.99 a pound. It was 2.99 not that long ago. Coffee: I was going out and getting whole bean from the dispenser bins for 5.99 a pound just a couple of years ago. Now, it is hard to find at 7.99, and the sealed bags that used to be a pound are now 12 ounces. A cereal box used to be able to give me three good sittings of cereal, but now they are so thin they scarcely hold two bowls. Bread: 2.99 for a one-pound loaf of the store brand. Really, it was 1.99 only two years ago. That is 50% more.
Then there is gasoline. When Bush left office, it was 2.89 a gallon for regular, which is all I buy. That bastard Bush took his 2.89 gasoline with him, and all we have now is 3.99 gasoline. See, it really is Bush’s fault.
No inflation?
They exclude energy and food from their inflation calculation. Since energy (home heating/cooling/electricity, gas) and food make up a big chunk of people's budgets (and a dominant chunk for older people with paid-up homes), this means that the government's inflation figures are totally meaningless.