There are some horrendous answers here. In the spirit of ELI5: prices, in general, increasing and not decreasing is called inflation. Prices, in general, decreasing is called deflation.
The ‘price’ of something has how much money it costs to buy it. The government is continually increasing the total amount of dollars (or whichever currency) there is, meaning that the value of a single dollar is constantly decreasing. Put (overly)simply, if you make more of something that is values because it is scarce, the value of it decreases. [Douglas Adams’ story about leaves](https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/685739-if-the-management-consultant-said-tersely-we-could-for-a) is the best ELI5 way of explaining this.
Latest Answers