A list ranked ten states by cost of living. Journalists called this inflation. Inflation is not a list. Inflation is monetary policy exceeding productivity gains across an economy. A list is what you make before grocery shopping then ignore completely.
The article promises these states are being punished to an extreme degree. Extreme compared to what. Extreme compared to moderately expensive states. So expensive states are more expensive than less expensive states. Hard-hitting stuff. Someone got paid to write that Hawaii costs more than Oklahoma.
Here's what happened: A website needed traffic. They sorted states by aggregate cost metrics. They slapped "inflation" in the headline because fear converts better than information. Now some guy in California reads this and thinks monetary policy personally targeted his zip code. It didn't. He just lives where everyone else wants to live and supply curves exist.
The same ten states show up on this list every year. They were expensive in 2024. They were expensive in 2019. They'll be expensive in 2031. Calling this news is like calling Tuesday a breaking development. But retail traders will read this and think they've discovered actionable intelligence. They'll move their Robinhood account to Wyoming. They'll save $400 a month on rent and lose $8,000 on SPY puts because they still don't understand theta decay.
The real punishment isn't inflation. It's living in an expensive state while being poor enough to care about lists ranking expensive states. Rich people in Manhattan aren't reading articles about cost of living. They're not Googling "is my state expensive." They know it's expensive. They don't care. The article isn't for them.
It's for you, refreshing your budgeting app at 2 AM, wondering why Massachusetts costs so much, as if the answer changes anything about your lease.
Photo by Marek Studzinski on Unsplash
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