Inflation is caused by ‘too much government spending,’ affirms Elon Musk. Here’s what he likes for wealth protection

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As Americans watched their buying powerfulness erode done 2021 and 2022, with ostentation peaking astatine a 40-year precocious of 9.1% successful June 2022 (1), pundits offered a agelong database of factors they blamed for causing the emergence successful the outgo of goods: accrued user spending, rising labour costs, proviso concatenation disruptions and monetary and fiscal policies.

However, if the precocious Nobel Prize-winning economist Milton Friedman — renowned for his enactment connected monetary argumentation and free-market principles — were inactive alive, he’d surely person a much straightforward mentation for the phenomenon.

“Inflation is made successful Washington due to the fact that lone Washington tin make money, and immoderate different attribution to different groups of ostentation is wrong,” Friedman erstwhile famously stated (2).

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“Consumers don’t nutrient it. Producers don’t nutrient it. The commercialized unions don’t nutrient it. Foreign sheiks don’t nutrient it. Oil imports don’t nutrient it. What produces it is excessively overmuch authorities spending and excessively overmuch authorities instauration of wealth and thing else.”

Although Friedman (who died successful 2006) made these remarks decades ago, they proceed to onslaught a chord. Back successful October 2024, Sen. Rand Paul posted a clip of this speech, which garnered much than 50 cardinal views connected X.

The station besides caught the oculus of Tesla CEO Elon Musk, who reposted it, on with a “100%” emoji to awesome his afloat statement with Friedman’s message.

High prices person been throttling Americans’ budgets for years. Though ostentation was down to 2.4% successful January 2026, the state is inactive facing an affordability crisis.

Since 2020, costs person soared — the terms of groceries is up 30%, energy has risen 41% and car repairs person skyrocketed 63%. And portion mean play wages person risen 31% implicit the past six years, ostentation has erased astir of those gains (3).

Americans are besides acrophobic astir the effects of tariffs connected their wallets. Though the One Big Beautiful Bill Act is poised to boost taxation refunds this year, the Tax Foundation estimates that for middle-income households, tariffs volition erase 70% to 95% of those gains. For lower-income taxation filers, the concern is adjacent worse (4).