Interesting... It would seem that sMerit expenditures have stabilized, or are even increasing. I know that theymos added a few merit sources recently... probably won't add any more for a while now.
Total merit sources increased from 123 to 130 with 7 more newly added merit sources, but total allocated merits to merit sources only increased 160 merits (from 20735 to 20895). It means that each of 7 new merit sources received around 160/7 ~ 23 merit per 30 days, that is not significant amount, in my opinion.
Maybe, theymos wanted to test effectiveness of new merit sources, before giving them more allocated merits, or it is theymos' intention to keep merit inflation at lows.
New merit sources do receive too many merits:
There are 130 merit sources with a total merit generation of up to 20895 sMerit per 30 days
When theymos first recruited me, my original allocation was 50 merits. (I've heard that some start out with much less.) It does not surprise me that he wants to start out people low to test them out. Also, I believe Vod was relieved of his merit source duties at around the same time. Therefore there are 8 new merit sources. I'm not certain how high Vod's merit source allocation was. However, I suspect that his source allocation was at least 250.