Who doesnt want to believe that inflation is somewhere below 3 or 4%? But then again, who wouldnt like to believe that money really does grow on trees? Kidding aside, unlike the money on trees story, Americans continue to be led down the primrose path regarding inflation. What Im saying is that the supposed low rate of inflation today is a full-blown urban myth.

The Consumer Price Index (CPI) serves the government well. Since cost of living adjustments to Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, welfare payments, salary and pension adjustments for government employees and retirees are all tied directly to the CPI, keeping the index low saves the government virtually billions of dollars.

But what about you?

A deceptively low CPI combined with low interest rates and easy credit encourages overspending and increased credit use. If you knew that actual inflation was at least 10% a year, would you be as comfortable incurring debt at your current rate? I dont think so. Youd realize you were going to need more income in the year(s) to come to not have debt service eat up your resources. Experts agree that the cost of living is rising faster than earnings.

In fact, The Wall Street Journal on January 3, 2006 reads in big letters: For Americans in 2005, Earnings Didnt Keep Pace with Boom in Spending. Spending has not outpaced spending in America since 1933. According to the article, in 2005 preliminary government data shows that Americans spent $39 billion more than they earned. Credit access became more important than ever before. According to The Plastic Safety Net: The Reality Behind Debt in America, October 2005, groceries and other basics are being paid more often with credit. http://www.demos-usa.org/pubs/PSN_low.pdf

Does it make you crazy when on one hand youre told the CPI is low and the economy is on the rise but on the other, your personal experience tells you something very different? Heating bills go up 50%; housing prices increase by 45% between 2000 and 2004, property taxes soar along with college tuitions and medical premiums. Go figure! People are tapped out and living on the edge.

The government has an entire tool kit of strategies to maintain a low official inflation rate. One of them involves keeping what are called volatile goods and services either out of the index or weighted in such a way they dont have much impact (i.e. real estate prices, property taxes and energy costs.) As regards real estate, the CPI uses rent figures, called rent equivalency to track housing costs as the way to avoid factoring in the real cost of housing. This is very important since 30% of the CPI has to do with housing! Property tax increases dont get factored at all. Read this article, The Core Rate: http://www.financialsense.com/stormwatch/2005/0624.html

Richard Benson, president of Specialty Finance Group, LLC and PrudentBear.com, and his wife took on the task of tracking their personal expenses in order to uncover their actual rate of inflation. Their starting point was the happy fact that they owned their car and home (no more payments). Even so, they found basic expenses to be rising 8-10% per year, including health care insurance, automobile and property expenses, electricity, high speed Internet, telephone, property tax and monthly maintenance. Food (groceries), gas for the car and clothing expenses were not included. Imagine what a real inflation rate is for those with a mortgage, especially if they bought in the last 5 years!

When this unofficial fact of escalating basic costs and a likely 10% actual rate of inflation is considered, it is cause for serious pause. But when combined with the fact that interest rates are the highest they have been in 2 years and that the housing bubble has peaked and may soon burst to trigger a recession, its downright mind numbing. For the past five years, homeowner mania has driven the economy, financing consumer spending via cash out mortgages to pay for everything savings and incomes could not.

A report written by Lehman Brothers Investment Firm cited that even though housing constructions is only 5% of our national economy, one third of the economic growth during this period could be attributed to the housing boom. Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and The Center for Economic and Policy Research estimate that if the housing market does change dramatically, the U.S. stands to lose between 1-6 million jobs. And this does not include jobs in other industries that are housing construction dependent.

Without a consumption course correction for the average American (and world citizen), an era of modern-day slavery lurks perilously closer. Similar to being owned by a human master, the risk today is one of being owned by credit-lending institutions. As ever-larger chunks of income are promised to pay interest-bearing loans (in the name of having it all and Live Richly), families and individuals pay the real price the gradual loss of personal freedom.

The time has come to wake up from wishful thinking and smell the truth of the economys shape shifting to one that requires individuals to access credit as a basic necessity. Unfortunately, being positive and optimistic wont change the way the system works. Real solutions require gaining a hidden piece of information about how money works, a personal conviction based on this full disclosure about money to change personal finance habits and, grassroots collaboration with other like-minded people. Its nothing short of a lifestyle revolution.