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The Ultimate Guide to Inflation

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Re: The Ultimate Guide to Inflation

#131

Post by paulpauper »

vsareto wrote: post #126
bob33212 wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We are entering a Post Scarcity Economy. A lot of fiction books write about how this plays out. Regardless of what happens a lot of economic theory becomes less relevant. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post-scarcity_economy#:~:text=... .

If you believe that post scarcity is possible at all, you might consider that space colonization is also possible, but that brings about new significant requirements and needs that our economy will have to meet. Personally I think our civilization's ambition needs to expand so that happens. If we are still putting the "American Dream" as a goal when that can be built and satisfied cheaply by automation, then our goal…

it does not have to be either/or. some people can live a low-impact, low-cost post-scarcity lifestyle, while others can aim/aspire for more abundance

Re: The Ultimate Guide to Inflation

#132

Post by sbelskie »

vmception wrote: post #128
sbelskie wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But if the government raises taxes you don’t get to sue for lost expected income (absent some specific extenuating circumstances), do you?

What do the Court of Claims cases say? Were those cases dismissed?

I’m not a lawyer or a scholar on these matters, so can you help point me to the Court of Claims you mean? The only one I can find no longer exists: “The Court of Claims was a federal court that heard claims against the United States government. It was established in 1855, renamed in 1948 to the United States Court of Claims (67 Stat. 226), and abolished in 1982.”

Re: The Ultimate Guide to Inflation

#133

Post by lotsofpulp »

sgerenser wrote: post #95
lotsofpulp wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have no idea how families that earn less than $100k are saving enough money for healthcare expenses / loss of income in their years between 50 and 65 (or whatever age Medicare will start at in the future). Unless you have a cushy government job with those benefits or a high paying white collar job, those years are the most likely for you to lose income due to age, health reasons, etc and any new job you get probabl…

With ACA that’s only really a problem for those just over the income cliff. Health insurance costs after subsidy for most retired folks pulling, say, 50k-60k or so per year from retirement accounts and social security are pretty low.

Social security does not (currently) start until 62 or 63, and that’s with a hefty reduction in benefit. I expect by the time I retire, full benefits won’t be available until 75 or something, and it will be means tested (and/or the value of the benefit decreased via decreasing value of USD).

I do not know what the ACA subsidies are for people, but the ~$17k annual out of pocket maximum is what kills you. A single heart attack or stroke at the end of the year will cost you $34k (assuming you need healthcare in two calendar years today, who knows how much 2 decades in the future).

Plus, of course, surprise bills from out of network providers.

Re: The Ultimate Guide to Inflation

#134

Post by treeman79 »

ClumsyPilot wrote: post #123
midhhhthrow wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s just the opposite. The essential goods needed for survival: shelter is becoming more and more Scarce. 34% of millennials can’t even afford their own shelter anymore and are forced to live with parents. Those who can live by themselves are paying over 40% of their income on shelter. There’s been a pretty dramatic drop in living standards here in the US over the last several decades The fact that we can now afford…

Housing prices are not driven by scarcity, they are driven by financialization of our economy. There are multiple cities in England where population has decreased but house prices increased. During lockdown 700k people left London, but house prices kept going up.

Triple the housing supply.

Prices will go down.

Re: The Ultimate Guide to Inflation

#135

Post by blake1 »

Reads like it was written by someone who reads many inflation “truthers,” but is too empirical to believe the hype. Correctly rejects the asset-price inflation theories, which hold that the stock market, Bitcoin, and fine art appreciations are evidence of hidden inflation. Also correctly points out the flaws in CPI, while ignoring the many improved inflation measures, like trimmed mean, the MIT billion price index, or the Fed’s preferred core PCE measure.

Re: The Ultimate Guide to Inflation

#136

Post by gruez »

sologoub wrote: post #114

This chart in the expense share of a typical income illustrates a number of issues well, but healthcare stands out like crazy: https://mobile.twitter.com/_cingraham/status/123195012984367... College, transportation and housing are all pretty high overall, but the healthcare share is just stunning. If we were looking at dramatically better outcomes or services, fine. Unfortunately, doctors get to see patients for less…

tracing back to the source of the chart...

>Cass calls this calculation the Cost-of-Thriving Index. It measures the median male annual salary against four major household expenditures:

> • Housing, defined as the annual rent for a three-bedroom house in the 40th percentile of the local housing market.

> • Health care, defined as the annual premium on a typical family health insurance policy.

> • Transportation, defined as the average cost of owning and operating a car driven 15,000 miles per year.

> • Education, defined as the average cost of tuition, fees, and room and board at a four-year public college.

Why is education being overweight by a factor of several times? The other items are the annual cost of expenses that you incur annually. But education is only incurred 4 years out of the 80 years you're alive. Giving them the same weight as the other items is ridiculously misleading.

Re: The Ultimate Guide to Inflation

#137

Post by atq2119 »

cortesoft wrote: post #34

I've wondered what the effect our modern digital economy has had on consumer price inflation. Normally, an increase in money supply would cause consumer goods to increase in price, since more people are able to buy them and there is a limit on how much of any particular physical good is available. This isn't the case, however, for digital goods. If there are suddenly 100 million new people who want to buy a Netflix s…

> Normally, an increase in money supply would cause consumer goods to increase in price, since more people are able to buy them

This isn't actually true, though it's a widespread belief (quite a number of pundits kept making incorrect predictions after the global financial crisis).

Where the logic goes wrong is that an increase in money supply doesn't automatically translate into higher disposable incomes. (And higher disposable incomes don't automatically translate to higher effective demand, though in practice they usually do if you the increase in income isn't extremely unequally distributed.)

Re: The Ultimate Guide to Inflation

#138

Post by nine_zeros »

aazaa wrote: post #84
nine_zeros wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Crypto

Or... crypto and the commodities have it backward. The gold market is right. Prepare for the opposite of what the media are hyperventilating about now - a ridiculously strong dollar and deflation.

Crypto has provided an alternative to gold. The same printed dollars that would normally go to gold is flowing into crypto. The new generation of gold miners are not mining gold.

That's why gold hasn't risen dramatically. Crypto is absorbing the inflation.

Re: The Ultimate Guide to Inflation

#139

Post by secabeen »

gruez wrote: post #136
sologoub wrote: post #114

This chart in the expense share of a typical income illustrates a number of issues well, but healthcare stands out like crazy: https://mobile.twitter.com/_cingraham/status/123195012984367... College, transportation and housing are all pretty high overall, but the healthcare share is just stunning. If we were looking at dramatically better outcomes or services, fine. Unfortunately, doctors get to see patients for less…

tracing back to the source of the chart... >Cass calls this calculation the Cost-of-Thriving Index. It measures the median male annual salary against four major household expenditures: > • Housing, defined as the annual rent for a three-bedroom house in the 40th percentile of the local housing market. > • Health care, defined as the annual premium on a typical family health insurance policy. > • Transportation, defin…

> > • Education, defined as the average cost of tuition, fees, and room and board at a four-year public college.

> What is education being overweight by a factor of several times? The other items are the annual cost of expenses that you incur every year. But education is only incurred 4 years out of the 80 years you're alive. Giving them the same weight as the other items is ridiculously misleading.

That is strange. Education is also an oddly priced expenditure because the nameplate tuition is not the price paid by most students. It would be a lot better to use the the net price, which is much lower, but is harder to collect.

Re: The Ultimate Guide to Inflation

#140

Post by vmception »

sbelskie wrote: post #132
vmception wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do the Court of Claims cases say? Were those cases dismissed?

I’m not a lawyer or a scholar on these matters, so can you help point me to the Court of Claims you mean? The only one I can find no longer exists: “The Court of Claims was a federal court that heard claims against the United States government. It was established in 1855, renamed in 1948 to the United States Court of Claims (67 Stat. 226), and abolished in 1982.”

The court of federal claims still exists, odd one word messed up your google-fu
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