To give the original question answer slightly more (probably unfounded) credit, there are a lot of people out there who know the basics of what inflation is, but also seem to have a fundamental assumption that in a “normal” economy, wages will also increase at the same pace as inflation, resulting in a net zero effect on a person’s buying power overall. Even though, yes, things are always getting a little more expensive in absolute terms, they don’t seem more expensive. So the answer to the question someone with those assumptions might have actually been trying to ask is that even if inflation returns to a “normal” rate, wages have remained stagnant for a long time and aren’t keeping pace with inflation like they used to, so now things actually are more expensive in a relative sense.
To give the original question answer slightly more (probably unfounded) credit, there are a lot of people out there who know the basics of what inflation is, but also seem to have a fundamental assumption that in a “normal” economy, wages will also increase at the same pace as inflation, resulting in a net zero effect on a person’s buying power overall. Even though, yes, things are always getting a little more expensive in absolute terms, they don’t seem more expensive. So the answer to the question someone with those assumptions might have actually been trying to ask is that even if inflation returns to a “normal” rate, wages have remained stagnant for a long time and aren’t keeping pace with inflation like they used to, so now things actually are more expensive in a relative sense.