In this respect our tiresome Keynesian school-marm, Janet Yellen, was in fine fettle upon the Friday jobs report, announcing that a "soft landing" had been achieved. Everything is now hunky-dory on main street, said she, because wages were up by 4.1% versus an estimated 3.2% rise in headline inflation for the 2023.

Let's see. Here are the values for average hourly wages and the headline CPI indexed to December 2020. As it has transpired, since Yellen and the Biden puppeteers purportedly took over economic policy, the cost of living (black line) has risen 25% more than the average hourly wage (purple line).