It’s not actually at a 40-year high. It’s the highest inflation ever.
When they claim it is merely a 40-year high, this makes people think “oh well, at least at some point in the past it was as bad as it is now and the world didn’t end back then so this must be okay.”
Woe unto ye.
They have repeatedly changed the way inflation is calculated and then compared the numbers calculated using the newer – and much more dishonest – methods to previous numbers that were calculated in another way.
Here’s the thing: if they were going to change the way inflation was calculated, and this wasn’t some kind of scam, they would go back and retroactively change the previous calculations. You see this with money, where they say “in today’s dollars.”
Here’s an easy example: Gone with the Wind is still the highest grossing film of all time, although it only made $390 million – because $390 million in 1939 is nearly 4 billion dollars in current dollars.