I ammend myself. You are correct,corrected inflation does compound - only not in the way that true compounding implies. It is heavily diluted over time.

For instance, if we start with a dollar in 1970, and call inflation 5% in 1970, and 2.5% every year afterwards, we get $1.31 in 1980.

If we go back and correct inflation by a huge 5% in 1970 to 10%(highly unlikely, worst case scenario), we get $1.37 in 1980. 6 cent difference. But 5 cents of that occurs in first year, the other cent takes 9 years to accumulate due to this compounding.

Assuming corrections happen in both directions, cancelling each other out over time, would it be reasonable to assume that that "ballpark" is again the key to dealing with inflation?