{"id":866843,"date":"2026-10-01T08:18:12","date_gmt":"2026-10-01T08:18:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/866843\/"},"modified":"2026-10-01T08:18:12","modified_gmt":"2026-10-01T08:18:12","slug":"the-affordability-illusion-the-washington-post","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/866843\/","title":{"rendered":"The affordability illusion\u00a0 &#8211; The Washington Post"},"content":{"rendered":"<p data-apitype=\"text\" data-contentid=\"22FBGDRXNNF5HKSTYAY3ROSJJQ\" data-el=\"text\" class=\"wpds-c-heFNVF wpds-c-heFNVF-iPJLV-css overrideStyles font-copy\" dir=\"null\">Today, we hear the word \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/www.urban.org\/data-tools\/american-affordability-tracker\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">affordability<\/a>\u201d everywhere. But what exactly does that mean?<\/p>\n<p data-apitype=\"text\" data-contentid=\"LAGQVOPPVZHNLPTSDZQORYP4R4\" data-el=\"text\" class=\"wpds-c-heFNVF wpds-c-heFNVF-iPJLV-css overrideStyles font-copy\" dir=\"null\">The annual inflation rate of <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bls.gov\/cpi\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">3.4 percent<\/a> reported in August 2026 sounds manageable, especially compared to the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.ebsco.com\/research-starters\/economics\/2021-2022-inflation-surge\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">pandemic-era peak of 9 percent.<\/a> But a closer look reveals that the day-to-day cost of living is far more troubling. What matters to consumers is not merely how quickly prices are rising, but the much higher prices they are paying after several years of inflation. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Today, we hear the word \u201caffordability\u201d everywhere. But what exactly does that mean? The annual inflation rate of&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":866844,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[28,101],"class_list":["post-866843","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-economy","tag-business","tag-economy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/866843","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=866843"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/866843\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/866844"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=866843"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=866843"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=866843"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}