You specifically said that "Food, gas, clothing and most hard commodities are up around 50%" over the last 3 years. I can't find any recent charts for food and clothing, but if you can find some, please post them.

The price of gas was at ridiculously low levels 3 years ago, but if you go back just a year prior, it was at $3.11. It's just kinda bounced around over the past six years, and is now around $3.40 or so, and has been on its way down since the spring. That, sir, is volatility.

You can't just cherry-pick a particular window to justify inflationary fears -- you have to look at the trend over time, and gas prices are among the most noisy prices due to the oil cartel, speculators, etc, so you have to be even more careful to not infer wider trends from spikes over 3 or even 6 months. Panicked statements like "prices are rising at the fastest rate ever" are uttered by clueless financial reporters who don't bother to inform readers that they fell at the same rate a few years before.

"The idea that deflation is horrible is a myth?" It's certainly horrible for borrowers, which makes it horrible for the economy at large, and falling prices mean lower revenues and profits for corporations.

Neither runawway inflation nor runaway deflation is desirable, but to say deflation is not a very bad thing is an opinion relegated to the crankiest of crank economists.