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Consumer prices increase 2.6 percent

bls.gov

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Re: Consumer prices increase 2.6 percent

#91

Post by KETpXDDzR »

Perfectly related: The guide to inflation https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27099536

We don't see any big CPI increase caused by quantitative easing. Wealthy people don't increase their food quality/need. I assume there's some effect of stimulus checks since most of them went to the 90% poorest Americans. Without, we'd might even see deflation.

What I took from that article is that inflation, as so many things in economics, is however you define it.

I wonder what the outcome of the growing split between poor and rich will be.

Re: Consumer prices increase 2.6 percent

#92

Post by thepasswordis »

In other news, the chocolate ration has been increased to 25 grams! Great success!

/s

Anybody living in the world can tell you that consumer prices are up a lot, lot more than 2.6%. Look even at this very thread. Food prices are way up, lumber prices are way up, restaurant prices are way up, clothing costs are up. Lots of goods literally just seem unbuyable at this point. Even in my city (nowhere near the southeast) people are now lining up to buy gas, which is also at the highest price it has been in almost 8 years.

Bullshit CPI is up 2.6%. Don't give me that propaganda number.

God damnit stuff like that is so insulting. People, real actual human being are suffering right now. It's practically evil to put out obviously gaslighting bullshit statistics like this as if they're crazy to notice that literally everything in their life has gotten more expensive.

"When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure."

Indeed.

Re: Consumer prices increase 2.6 percent

#93

Post by anotherman554 »

jrsj wrote: post #5
notyourday wrote: post #3

Anyone who has been to a supermarket in the last 12 months knows that the 2.6 percent increase in consumer prices is observably not true. I buy the same basket of the generic products ( chicken quarters, produce, beef, eggs, bacon, dairy products ) . Compared to this time in 2020 I'm spending at least 20% more. People who buy processed food(s) are spending at least 30% more.

Somehow everyone seems has this experience, rents have continued to climb at a high rate for the last decade, and they manage to downplay this in statistics.

In 2011, my rent was $1,420 a month. In 2021 my rent is $1,610 a month. According to the published inflation numbers my rent has gone down because it should be $1,672 if accounting for inflation.

I don't live in California-- maybe things are different there-- but I don't buy the conspiracy theories about inflation numbers.

Re: Consumer prices increase 2.6 percent

#94

Post by MontyCarloHall »

ahahahahah wrote: post #59
zaptheimpaler wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://www.epsilontheory.com/im-trying-to-understand-hedoni... "A Honda Accord cost $12,000 in 1990 and it costs $25,000 now. A Mustang was $9,000 and now it’s $27,000. The BLS has new car prices close to unchanged over the past 30 years." Whatever you think of the validity of "hedonic adjustments", this is certainly not what I would expect when BLS reports car prices as unchanged during that period.

Whatever you think of the validity of "hedonic adjustments" doesn't really matter as far as cars are concerned because the BLS doesn't apply hedonic adjustments to car prices.

Yes they do: https://www.bls.gov/cpi/quality-adjustment/new-vehicles.pdf

Re: Consumer prices increase 2.6 percent

#95

Post by katmannthree »

u320 wrote: post #82
snarf21 wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The government has perverse incentives to keep it low and close to the same. The way the CPI is calculated has changed dozes of times in the last 30 years. Like you said, if you at food, healthcare, education, etc., they are up way more than 3% year over year.

> Like you said, if you at food, healthcare, education, etc., they are up way more than 3% year over year. That's how averages work

The greater point is that the cost of essentials has skyrocketed but the effect is hidden in official inflation metrics because they include a large number of nonessential items such as utility-adjusted television prices.

Re: Consumer prices increase 2.6 percent

#96

Post by gruez »

thepasswordis wrote: post #92

In other news, the chocolate ration has been increased to 25 grams! Great success! /s Anybody living in the world can tell you that consumer prices are up a lot, lot more than 2.6%. Look even at this very thread. Food prices are way up, lumber prices are way up, restaurant prices are way up, clothing costs are up. Lots of goods literally just seem unbuyable at this point. Even in my city (nowhere near the southeast)…

>Anybody living in the world can tell you that consumer prices are up a lot, lot more than 2.6%. Look even at this very thread. Food prices are way up, lumber prices are way up, restaurant prices are way up, clothing costs are up.

who knew that if you cherrypick from a list of items rather than using a broad basket, you can get arbitrarily higher/lower averages?

Re: Consumer prices increase 2.6 percent

#97

Post by sbelskie »

prichino wrote: post #87
nostromo wrote: post #7

Some non-CPI items like cars (new and used) and basic commodities like lumber have grown a lot more than 2.6%. Correction: CPI does include new and used car prices, after a lot of adjustments, at 3.7% and 2.5%, respectively. It's important to note though that the median cost of cars sold has grown much faster than the CPI car numbers. This is because the BLS tries to account for car quality, so even though you're pay…

The inflation has been tampered with quite a bit over the years. It's how you explain how the avg American is much poorer than his parents. I.e. in real terms, as in being able to buy: quality food, quality car, quality house (what? renting? no, not the same) I like this website as it uses the older methodology which has been twice updated it seems: http://www.shadowstats.com/alternate_data/inflation-charts

If those numbers were right coffee would be $25 a cup. I can understand thinking CPI understates things, but the math for average inflation of 6-10% for decades just doesn’t add up.

Re: Consumer prices increase 2.6 percent

#98

Post by gruez »

prichino wrote: post #87
nostromo wrote: post #7

Some non-CPI items like cars (new and used) and basic commodities like lumber have grown a lot more than 2.6%. Correction: CPI does include new and used car prices, after a lot of adjustments, at 3.7% and 2.5%, respectively. It's important to note though that the median cost of cars sold has grown much faster than the CPI car numbers. This is because the BLS tries to account for car quality, so even though you're pay…

The inflation has been tampered with quite a bit over the years. It's how you explain how the avg American is much poorer than his parents. I.e. in real terms, as in being able to buy: quality food, quality car, quality house (what? renting? no, not the same) I like this website as it uses the older methodology which has been twice updated it seems: http://www.shadowstats.com/alternate_data/inflation-charts

>quality car

Ironic considering that the reason cars have gotten more expensive was because their quality increased.

>quality house

They've gotten bigger over the decades, better equipped, and the monthly payments have actually gone down

https://awealthofcommonsense.com/2021/03/what-if-housing-pri...

Re: Consumer prices increase 2.6 percent

#99

Post by [deleted] »

gruez wrote: post #96
thepasswordis wrote: post #92

In other news, the chocolate ration has been increased to 25 grams! Great success! /s Anybody living in the world can tell you that consumer prices are up a lot, lot more than 2.6%. Look even at this very thread. Food prices are way up, lumber prices are way up, restaurant prices are way up, clothing costs are up. Lots of goods literally just seem unbuyable at this point. Even in my city (nowhere near the southeast)…

>Anybody living in the world can tell you that consumer prices are up a lot, lot more than 2.6%. Look even at this very thread. Food prices are way up, lumber prices are way up, restaurant prices are way up, clothing costs are up. who knew that if you cherrypick from a list of items rather than using a broad basket, you can get arbitrarily higher/lower averages?

[deleted]

Re: Consumer prices increase 2.6 percent

#100

Post by gruez »

sbelskie wrote: post #97
prichino wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The inflation has been tampered with quite a bit over the years. It's how you explain how the avg American is much poorer than his parents. I.e. in real terms, as in being able to buy: quality food, quality car, quality house (what? renting? no, not the same) I like this website as it uses the older methodology which has been twice updated it seems: http://www.shadowstats.com/alternate_data/inflation-charts

If those numbers were right coffee would be $25 a cup. I can understand thinking CPI understates things, but the math for average inflation of 6-10% for decades just doesn’t add up.

Not to mention that 6-10% inflation combined with 2-3% GDP growth would mean the economy is contracting by 3-5%.
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