Ot cost of living

[CTMilller]

We're brainwashed to accept inflation as a fact of life, even though we live in a free market.

The natural state of a free market is deflationary. Prices should always fall to the marginal cost of production.

So why do prices continually go up?

Competitive market forces are only one of several factors that influence prices even in a free market economy. Geopolitics and the weathers’s effect on harvest are just two of several others that drive up margins and therefore prices.

To Crash’s point, olive oil prices have risen rapidly largely because of back-to-back poor harvests.