The US Government is lying.
It is a lot higher than that. ‘
What the US Federal Government does is create a “basket of goods” to measure inflation. They take out all the necessities of life like fuel, food, electricity, water, housing, insurance etc. The Government says those goods are “too volatile use to get an accurate measurement. The truth is it is done to keep the official inflation rate artificially low.
Social Security cost of living adjustments is, by law, tied to the official inflation rates. If the true rate of inflation was based on the necessities of life, it would be much higher thus requiring the US Government to have to divert hundreds of billions in spending to just paying the COLA adjustments every year.
Since LBJ and the “Great Society” programs, the Soc Security Trust Funds have been invested in US Government Debt. That means the Soc Security Trust Fund is merely an accounting gimmick to hide the fact that current US Federal spending must cover all Government obligations as well as any new spending the US Government wants to do.
Money is a substance created from nothingness by the Federal Reserve and other central banks. Anything associated with it cannot be expected to adhere to any particular “laws” of economics, because why should any laws apply to something created from nothingness?
Prices rise because counterparties in their imaginations think they should. This need not have anything to do with Federal spending or anything else. It is all derived from imagination. No philosophy or ideology necessarily has to change any of that. It’s whimsy.