Inflation reminds me a bit of the businessman who every day would stop at a pretzel stand just outside his office, and every day he would put 25 cents on the plate, but he'd never take a pretzel. And this went on for quite some time. He'd stop, put the quarter on the plate, and walk on into the office, never taking one. Then one day, as he put a quarter on the plate, the woman running the stand grabbed him by the arm. And he said, "You probably want to know why I've been putting 25 cents on your plate every day and never taking a pretzel." And she said, "Well, no. Really, I just wanted you to know pretzels have gone up to 35 cents."

R. Reagan

I changed only two first words to make it more general. One fun thing is that before this Reagan used same story and refer to government being this lady :-)