Richard CanfieldPodcast Host and IBC Advisor, Ascendant Financial · Authorized Infinite Banking Practitioner | Author of 4 Books

The 22% Pay Cut You Never Saw #podcastclips #shortsfeed

19 Aug 2026 · 1 min

Watch on YouTube

0:45

In this short commentary, the speaker explains that the Consumer Price Index (CPI) reflects a compounding erosion of purchasing power rather than a static annual rate. Using the posted CPI rates, they illustrate that $100 in 2015 now buys only about $78 in goods—a real value closer to $70 when accounting for compounding—effectively representing an unseen 22% pay cut over ten years. The speaker highlights that while a business may report $100 in profit, the actual purchasing power of that profit is reduced to $78 due to inflation, underscoring the hidden impact of inflation on wages and business earnings.

Chapters

this CPI that you see annually is actually like a compounding effect. So each year, it's not like your price is still stagnant at 2.8%, but each year the erosion of your purchasing power is actually going down. And I'm just using their posted rate, but it's not really the same thing. So every $100 in 2015, now 10 years later, buys about $78 worth of goods. I would roughly put the real is probably close to $70. So that's like a 22% pay cut you actually don't see on paper. If you think of it from the business, you've got a profit and that profit may show $100, but the real purchasing power from that $100 is actually $78.