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Inflation Down, Pain Still Up: The Real Cost-of-Living Crisis
Episode 32324th February 2026 • The Higher Standard • Chris Naghibi & Saied Omar
00:00:00 01:32:22

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Inflation “cooled” to a 2.4% headline print and yields eased, so the market tried to act like everything’s fine. Then you pay your utility bill, buy groceries, or look at a mortgage payment and remember we’re living in a post 2020 price reset economy. In this episode, we break down why CPI can look “better” while real life stays expensive, why housing is still stuck even with slightly lower rates, and how incentives are doing the heavy lifting for builders while affordability remains the real problem. We also hit the reality check in autos with record 1.67T in debt and subprime delinquencies at an all time high. And because the timeline can’t just be normal, we wrap with the AI ladder, from narrow tools to agentic systems, and what it means when the robots go from talking to doing.

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🔗 Resources:

Consumer Price Index Summary (U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics)

Treasury yields slip after slightly lighter CPI reading (CNBC)

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