Cauchy,First, I spoke about the GDP deflector. As you can see...

Cauchy,

First, I spoke about the GDP deflector. As you can see from the link provided bellow it includes ALL goods and services produced in the USA including capital and intermediate goods.

Second, although I never lived in the States I believe that the Food Stamp Program is a form of welfare designed to assist low income families to pay for their food, and most likely - as I said I never lived in the USA - indexed according to the CPI.

Having said that, you should remember:

1 - that the CPI only includes consumer goods and not capital or intermediate goods and services,

2 - that inflation is a GENERALIZE increase in prices and therefore that a much better measure of it is the GDP deflector,

3 - that the FED is targeting 2% inflation,

4 - that nobody in their right mind has ever denied the existence of inflation, as that is what the central banks are targeting so that if the economy suffers a shock the margin for lowering the interest rates before they reach 0 is 2% higher than otherwise and probably also because of the trade-off between inflation and unemployment - See link bellow to the Phillips curve.

5 - that gold itself does cause inflation, as it did in the whole of Europe after the Spanish conquests and in England after the discovery of gold in South Africa, and

6 - that the access to food stamps has to do with the unequal distribution of the income in the United States where the poor and the lower middle classes are being amalgamated through unemployment and progressively lower real wages. Finally you should have in mind that the Food Stamps program is part of the so called automatic stabilizers, that is, of several programs designed to either kick off or to work better during hard times. Since you seem to have some interest in welfare issues below are some links to some info on the subject to help you form a more informed opinion.


On economic stabilizers:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automatic_stabilizer
on the GDP deflector:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GDP_deflator
On the Phillips Curve:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phillips_curve
On Social security:
http://www.ssa.gov/pubs/10101.html
http://www.ssa.gov/history/briefhistory3.html
http://www.fondazionebasso.it/site/_files/Scuola_per_la_buona_politica/2008/Materiali_laboratori/OECD%20Countries.PD
http://www.offthechartsblog.org/tag/taking-stock-of-the-safety-net-series/
On why prices are not raising:
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-02-06/huggies-price-cut-shows-why-bond-market-backing-bernanke-considering-qe3.html

Cheers.