There is nothing more annoying than a continual rise in the inflation rate. If there is a steady rise in the inflation rate each year then you know you government is doing something horrible. Currently the United States government is printing money like it is candy, they seem to not care that it affects middle class people so much, which is a huge majority of the people.
The causes of inflation are one of two things, an increase in price or an increase of money into circulation. The latter is more common than the first, this is because the government has nothing to back money so it is easy to print it any time they want. The tend to tell the public that it will help the economy but they know it really will not, it has never worked before.
The idea is to push new money into the economy and artificially jump the economy. On paper this looks good because numbers are going up and it seems as if the economy is growing, but then the government will try and take the money back out of the economy. As you can imagine this causes for a few steps back and the people are then in worse shape than before the fake money was introduced. The fancy name the government likes to give this process is quantitative easing and we are about to enter are third round of it.
Inflation is reported currently at around 5% and that number is a bit of a lie, inflation is higher. The inflation rate is calculated by using a bunch of random items which are averaged, these items are not gas, food, or electric. It is understandable why these are not used they are volatile, yet these are the items that every single man must purchase everyday and they would tell the most about the current financial situation. Basically you will never really know what the inflation rate is unless you calculate it yourself.
Inflation is not getting better so you need to take all the steps you can in order to be prepared for anything that could happen as a result of a bad economy.