A couple weeks ago I read in a popular online newspaper “the price of food and gas has increased because of inflation” and it’s mind-bogglingly absurd. Inflation is a short for “prices are increasing”, which means the quote reads “prices are increasing because prices are increasing”.

Now, I know why it was written like this, to promote dubious conservative anti-inflation measures like public spending cuts, but the sheer bad faith of the quote itself that no economist would sign off on has left me bothered ever since.