evidence: Food and energy have seen some of the steepest hikes. The price of beef is up more than 17%, restaurant meals more than 5%, and natural gas more than 20%, while gasoline prices have soared by more than 42% over the last year, according to the U.S. Department of Labor. [...] Michael Klein: Inflation is the rate of change of prices for what’s called the basket of goods. And that basket of goods is supposed to be representative of what an average, urban consumer purchases. [...] One factor is that inflation is measured as what prices are now compared to a year ago. A year ago, we were in the depths of the downturn, but when you look two years ago for the comparison instead of a year ago, inflation doesn’t look as bad.