> We are in a period of rapid inflation but mainstream economists and the government pretend we aren’t. It has been going on for decades but the official inflation rate is supposedly sub-2% while healthcare, education, daycare, high-quality food, housing, and all manner of highly-desirable-yet-cannot-be-easily-created assets have gone way up in price and are unreachable to even the middle class let alone the poor.

Can't agree more. Cheap, imported crap remains cheap and crappy, and everyone pretends that because TVs and egg mcmuffins remain affordable to the common man, therefore inflation is under control. Meanwhile asset prices, healthcare, housing, education (i.e., all the real, actual things important for someone's life that take up the bulk of their income) balloon in price.