 inflation isn't the price level it's the rate of increase in prices a reduction in the inflation rate from nine percent to three percent doesn't mean that prices should drop six percent it means that they will go up three percent three years ago transferring three hundred thousand dollars worth of equipment over two years meant the buyer would have to pay an interest cost of about fifteen hundred dollars now it's almost twenty five thousand dollars three years ago the interest cost of selling a million dollars of farmland on an installment basis was about a hundred and sixty thousand dollars