Elon Musk agrees that inflation is 'made in Washington' — how the world's wealthiest man protects his riches

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As Americans watched their buying powerfulness erode done 2021 and 2022, with ostentation peaking astatine a 40-year precocious of 9.1% successful June 2022 (1), pundits offered a agelong database of factors they blamed for causing the emergence successful the outgo of goods: accrued user spending, rising labour costs, proviso concatenation disruptions and monetary and fiscal policies.

Now, 2026 has brought much of the aforesaid with rising costs and ostentation struck 4.2% twelvemonth implicit twelvemonth arsenic of May, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics information utilized by the US Inflation Calculator (2).

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However, if the precocious Nobel Prize-winning economist Milton Friedman — renowned for his enactment connected monetary argumentation and free-market principles — were inactive alive, he'd person a much straightforward mentation for the phenomenon. And it each comes down to a azygous origin oregon — much specifically — a definite place.

"Inflation is made successful Washington due to the fact that lone Washington tin make money, and immoderate different attribution to different groups of ostentation is wrong," Friedman erstwhile famously stated (3).

"Consumers don't nutrient it. Producers don't nutrient it. The commercialized unions don't nutrient it. Foreign sheiks don't nutrient it. Oil imports don't nutrient it. What produces it is excessively overmuch authorities spending and excessively overmuch authorities instauration of wealth and thing else."

Although Friedman (who died successful 2006) made these remarks decades ago, they proceed to onslaught a chord. Back successful October 2024, Sen. Rand Paul posted a clip of this speech, which garnered much than 50 cardinal views connected X.

The station besides caught the oculus of Tesla CEO Elon Musk, who reposted it, on with a "100%" emoji to awesome his statement with Friedman's message.

Hedging against ostentation

High prices person been throttling Americans' budgets for years.

Since 2020, costs person soared — the terms of groceries is up 30%, energy has risen 41% and car repairs person skyrocketed 63%. And portion mean play wages person risen 31% implicit the past six years, ostentation has erased astir of those gains (3).