Inflation Since 1800 - Log Scale

The question was asked in Look What the Fed Has Done to Our Money from earlier today what inflation over the last two centuries would look like using a log scale. I just happened to have that data laying around and it’s not all that hard to change the scale, so, voilà!

It’s not that much different. In fact, it’s instructive in that the war-related inflation over the last two hundred years most likely appears in this chart in a way that is similar to how it was felt at the time. These weren’t just modest little price rises, they were huge increases from current price levels as indicated in the blue bars.

Of course, we haven’t really had any major wars since 1971 to justify the kind of price increases that have been seen and, unlike the pre-WWII period, we aren’t likely to ever see prices decline again.