WOW, inflation is on a tear! I was in extreme hopes that inflation was going to be transitory as they have been saying, but it appears that will not be the case. This is starting to look and smell a bit like when President Jimmy Carter was in office.

Americans across the country are seeing higher prices at the mall, grocery store and gas pump, causing new pain for their pocketbooks right as the holiday shopping season is set to commence.

According to numbers released by the labor department earlier this week, inflation has risen at its highest rate in three decades, as consumer prices soared by 6.2% compared to the same period last year. This is the biggest one-year jump seen in the government’s consumer price index since 1990.

Many Americans now are too young to remember the pain and uncertainty that inflation wreaked on the country in the 1970s. It was a period of mass destruction economically, where wages and prices snowballed, and the purchasing power of savings dwindled before a painful correction that led to a recession and double-digit unemployment rates in the early 1980s.

Like the famous economist Milton Friedman stated years ago “inflation tax is like taxation without representation”. It will hit the lower income earners the hardest. Heating costs are expected to rise dramatically, and this means Americans should expect to shell out more money to heat their homes this year — especially if it is a very cold winter. Compared with last winter, households will spend 54% more for propane, 43% more for home heating oil, 30% more for natural gas and 6% more for electric heating, the US Energy Information Administration said in a new report Wednesday.