Fat Americans In Pick-Ups Push PPI Up

By Douglas A. McIntyre Published Feb 26, 8:57AM EST

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Inflation rose faster than expected last month, up 1% driven high by food prices and gasoline. Looking at the numbers year-over-year, the increase was over 7%. According to MarketWatch "This is the fastest pace since 1981." That is called inflation plain and simple. It can no longer be referred to as inflationary pressure or upward price trends.

To some extent, American habits play into the rise in costs for agriculture products and oil. In places like Japan most of the population does not spend their time in Dunkin’ Donuts and driving around in 10 MPG pick-ups that never haul anything more than the family dog.

Inflation, especially built on the current increase in commodities can be fixed, at least in part, by the government offering tax incentives to people who buy foods which are not processed. Or, the government could tax fried foods the way it does booze and coffin nails. The same holds true for cars. A tax break for a Prius and an extra tax for a Ford F-150.

Inflation is not a foregone trend, as long as consumers get a financial reason to make a modest change in habits. It would be a better way to spread money around than simply sending out tax rebate checks.

Douglas A. McIntyre

About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.