Somebody Should Start The Stuff Costs Too Much PartyMichael Snyder, Contributor I feel like I am in the middle of some bizarre movie entitled The Incredible Shrinking Dollar. Sadly, I am far from alone. There are millions upon millions of American families that are seeing their expenses continue to rise even as their paychecks remain the same. But neither Barack Obama nor Mitt Romney seems very concerned about inflation. In fact, the Federal Reserve, QE3 and Ben Bernanke were not even mentioned in any of the three presidential debates. So I think that somebody should start the Stuff Costs Too Much Party. Inflation is a tax which is destroying the value of each dollar that we hold a little bit more every single day, and the American people deserve to know the truth about what is going on. In this day and age, it simply does not pay to put money into long-term savings. When you finally pull your money out it will have far less purchasing power than it originally did. Way back in 1950, you could buy a first-class stamp for just 3 cents and you could buy a gallon of gasoline for about 27 cents. Wouldnt it be great if you could still get a gallon of gasoline for 27 cents? A recent article by Benny Johnson detailed how the prices of many of the things that we buy on a regular basis absolutely soared between 2002 and 2012. Just check out these price increases Eggs: 73% So what will the next ten years bring? Unfortunately, we are already being told that it looks like inflation is going to start accelerating. A recent CNBC article started this way That is not what millions of struggling American families need to hear right about now. Their bills just keep going up but their paychecks are not keeping pace. Have you noticed that almost everything that we spend money on just keeps rising year after year? Has your paycheck tripled? Electricity bills in this country have risen faster than the overall rate of inflation for five years in a row. Winter is a really bad time for power bills. Millions of struggling families will set their thermostats very low this winter and yet will still be slammed with absolutely outrageous bills. Of course just about every type of insurance is going up faster than the overall rate of inflation. Have you gotten a price increase notice in the mail lately? I have. The price of health insurance in particular has soared in recent years. Health insurance premiums increased faster than the overall rate of inflation in 2011 and that is happening once again in 2012. All of these price increases are pushing many American families to the breaking point. But Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke insists that there is very little inflation right now, and he has government statistics to back his assertions up. Of course the way that the government calculates inflation has changed more than 20 times since 1978, but Bernanke never mentions that. According to John Williams of shadowstats.com, if inflation was measured exactly the same way that it was back in 1990, the official inflation rate would be about 5 percent right now. The American Institute for Economic Research says that inflation is even high than that. According to them, the real rate of inflation was about 8 percent last year. Meanwhile, household incomes are actually going down all over America. Even though we are supposedly in the midst of an economic recovery, median household income has declined for four years in a row. Overall, median household income has declined by more than $4000 over the past four years. Incomes are going down and prices just keep on rising. So how are families adjusting? Well, many of them are spending less. One survey found that 62 percent of all middle class Americans have had to reduce household spending over the past year. Others are going into increasing amounts of debt in an attempt to survive from month to month. So you might want to use your extra dollars right now. They are never going to be more valuable than they are today, and in the event of a major disaster they might lose value very, very rapidly. Unfortunately, millions of American families dont have any extra money at all. Many of them have been slowly worn down by this economy and are now just desperately trying to survive. The following is what one reader shared in a comment following one of my recent articles Dont think that it cant happen to you. What would you do if you suddenly lost your job and could not find another one? Would you be able to survive? Just because you are living a middle class lifestyle today does not mean that you will be in the same position a year from now. The truth is that everything in your life can change in a single day. The following is from a comment that one of my readers named Kimberly left recently The U.S. economy has never even come close to recovering from the last economic downturn. If you doubt this, just read this article. Now the next economic crisis is rapidly approaching us. If you think that the economic pain and suffering in this country are bad now, just wait. We havent seen anything yet. Things are going to get much, much worse. This article first appeared here at the Economic Collapse. Michael Snyder is a writer, speaker and activist who writes and edits his own blogs The American Dream and Economic Collapse Blog. Follow him on Twitter here. 