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The true costs of inflation in small-town Texas

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Re: The true costs of inflation in small-town Texas

#141

Post by avidphantasm »

richbell wrote: post #28
imgabe wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It sounds like the restaurant was a side project that was barely solvent to begin with. They could try raising prices, but if the customers leave then people simply aren't willing to pay what it costs to keep that place open and the demand to support that restaurant in that place just isn't there.

> It sounds like the restaurant was a side project that was barely solvent to begin with This is an incredibly bad take. Restaurants are a grueling business and many have low margins — 80% fail within 5 years. Since the beginning of the pandemic many incredible and beloved restaurants in my city have been forced to close due to lock downs, landlords raising rents, rising costs, etc. > They could try raising prices, b…

There are no capitalists in foxholes. Stop voting for neoliberal vampires (i.e., Democrats) and small business tyrants (i.e., Republicans). If people want price controls, vote for social democrats and communists. If none are running where they live, run for office on monopoly busting and price controls.

Re: The true costs of inflation in small-town Texas

#142

Post by onlyrealcuzzo »

nostromo wrote: post #51

I’ve seen some people showing actual price increases they’ve seen in their local communities. For a lot of folks it’s much higher than is being reported. Here’s one from a person in Seattle: https://preview.redd.it/max54wqv9kb91.png?width=1112&format=...

I'm assuming there are many things in that person's basket of goods which did not change in price at all, and many others that did not change in price as much.

Housing makes up 37% of the basket. It's noticably absent. And it's measured... Interestingly.

Lasagna at a restaurant is just a small part of food away from home which makes up https://www.bls.gov/cpi/tables/relative-importance/r-cpi-e-2...

Re: The true costs of inflation in small-town Texas

#143

Post by dagw »

chomp wrote: post #66
nostromo wrote: post #51

I’ve seen some people showing actual price increases they’ve seen in their local communities. For a lot of folks it’s much higher than is being reported. Here’s one from a person in Seattle: https://preview.redd.it/max54wqv9kb91.png?width=1112&format=...

I'm super skeptical of posts like this because they seem cherry picked, or at best, have local price increases that aren't reflected elsewhere in the country. Half of those are restaurants, who have had challenges for the past 2 years outside of inflation. Gas has its own challenges, a head of lettuce at my local grocer is $1.52 which is cheaper than that person's 2021 price. Notably not included in that post is thin…

beef has had 4 straight months of decreases

Even that’s uneven in my experience. Cheap ‘bulk’ meat isn’t up much, but ‘fancy’ meat (local, organic, grass fed etc.) is up over 30% where I am. Although I suspect that is at least partially due to “price gouging” the more price insensitive customers that buy that sort of product

Re: The true costs of inflation in small-town Texas

#144

Post by yobbo »

sofixa wrote: post #110
cardosof wrote: post #71

As others said: traffic goes down, restaurants close doors. Food prices may not be the culprit, people getting their meals from delivery and cooking at home may be the cause as well. Having that said, I do work in market research and gather purchase data and create inflation models for a living and to be honest things look really scary from the US to UK+EU and Latin America (which is used to high inflation though). W…

> Who knew all that free money from the last decade would do that! As if a war where one of the largest fossil fuel exporters, also exporting enormous amounts of foodstuffs, invaded the biggest exporter in some foodstuffs (grain, sunflower oil, etc.) and a pandemic with all the death, lowered economic activity and lockdowns have nothing to do with the current economic situation. Oil and gas prices are up, and they're…

"Deaths" from the pandemic have zero impact on inflation.

Oil prices are high and have been climbing since a short-term bottom at the the start of the pandemic. Prices since february are not noteworthy.

Fossil fuel production seems to have peaked in 2018 or 2019 last I saw some charts.

Germany and Europe are shutting down coal and nuclear power plants, and this is having big and wide impact. Dependence on russian nat.gas, and thus the war (with gas prices), are just a few of the consequences. European energy price is raising the price of fertilizer, which is raising costs in agriculture, and so on.

But, for all that stimulus money to not cause inflation, world energy production would have had to double or 1.5x or something. But that's impossible.

Re: The true costs of inflation in small-town Texas

#145

Post by nonameiguess »

nostromo wrote: post #51

I’ve seen some people showing actual price increases they’ve seen in their local communities. For a lot of folks it’s much higher than is being reported. Here’s one from a person in Seattle: https://preview.redd.it/max54wqv9kb91.png?width=1112&format=...

Thanks to buying almost everything from Amazon, I get a nice record of exactly how much I spent and can compare to the price being offered today, so I'm going to do that. I'm just going to go to 2020 and see what I can find:

- Topo Chico 24 pack of 12 oz glass bottles: then $20.99, now not available (damn shame because it's my wife's favorite drink, but these seemed to disappear in the pandemic and never came back)

- Chameleon cold brew coffee, 32 oz: then $9.99, now $8.36

- Fire 7 HD tablet for my niece: then $99, now $139 for the Fire 8

- Optimum Nutrition Whey Protein, 5 lbs: then $58.64, now $59.36

- A wireless keyboard: then $29.99, now $27.99

- Deep conditioning hair mask: then $25.00, now $25.55

- Organic Valley heavy whipping cream, 16 oz: then $4.79, now $5.69

- Set of 3 floating shelves: then $14.99, now $13.69

- Fage full-fat greek yogurt, 32 oz: then $5.49, now $5.99

- 1 pint organic blueberries: then $4.49, now $4.49

- 2 pack of 3.4 oz Sensodyne toothpaste: then $20.48, now $12.79

- Cabinet mounted USB fans, 12": then $39.99, now $39.99

This isn't cherry picked in any way, not pulling from memory or looking back after sticker shock. It's just everything I bought in December 2020.

Re: The true costs of inflation in small-town Texas

#146

Post by konschubert »

hgomersall wrote: post #138
konschubert wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Inflation is when the ratio of / grows. This can happen by the numerator growing (your (a)) or the denominator shrinking (your (b)).

A moment's consideration would show that's too simplistic. Money available has been growing for years without any notable inflation. It's not like we all rush out to spend every bit of income we have, a fair amount gets saved which effectively neutralises it.

is a simplification, yes: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Money_supply

Re: The true costs of inflation in small-town Texas

#147

Post by rob_c »

pengaru wrote: post #125

In 2021 this IKEA gateleg table [0] cost $199 [1]. In early 2022 it was $229 according to my records, but never in stock at any IKEAs near me. Presumably because of all the crazy supply chain/lumber problems, the IKEA shelves were largely empty. By the time it managed to get back in stock, the price was $259 [2]. Today it's $279 [0], a 40% increase over its 2021 price. I don't even know how low it was before 2020/pre…

"don't worry you're just imagining it, the market will correct itself"

We're now into the early 1920's stage of potentially a huge depression which will probably end (at best) in a cold war with China/Global-East. At worst more and more proxy conflicts as superpowers turn back to expansionism rather than fixing the fact that the bubble around an exponential growth based economy will eventually burst.

Re: The true costs of inflation in small-town Texas

#148

Post by landemva »

sofixa wrote: post #110
cardosof wrote: post #71

As others said: traffic goes down, restaurants close doors. Food prices may not be the culprit, people getting their meals from delivery and cooking at home may be the cause as well. Having that said, I do work in market research and gather purchase data and create inflation models for a living and to be honest things look really scary from the US to UK+EU and Latin America (which is used to high inflation though). W…

> Who knew all that free money from the last decade would do that! As if a war where one of the largest fossil fuel exporters, also exporting enormous amounts of foodstuffs, invaded the biggest exporter in some foodstuffs (grain, sunflower oil, etc.) and a pandemic with all the death, lowered economic activity and lockdowns have nothing to do with the current economic situation. Oil and gas prices are up, and they're…

> Oil and gas prices are up, and they're a factor in pretty much every other product's price.

True. So why did it make sense for USA to restrict oil pipeline build and reduce oil drilling permits in past 18 months? USA was energy independent a few years ago, and now POTUS asks Saudi Arabia and Venezuela for energy. This is a strange turn.

Re: The true costs of inflation in small-town Texas

#149

Post by rob_c »

UIUC_06 wrote: post #86

The problem of inflation has been solved before. It is a monetary phenomenon, period. It was solved by Paul Volcker turning the screws, mercilessly, until it went away. I can understand the desire to treat it as brand-new, never been seen before. After all, maybe you weren't even around the last time this was a problem.

Yes, and we knew covid-19 was of the covid class of virus, people still treated it like it was an alien contageon asif it had never been documented and studied pre-2019 extremely well how this class of infection spreads and what the full risk profile looks like.

The biggest problem here is the risk of "those who don't know history are doomed to repeat it" is cropping up in all forms of public, opinion driven politics and it's in all likelyhood not going to end well. I wish and hope that I'm wrong.

Re: The true costs of inflation in small-town Texas

#150

Post by fzeroracer »

Short-term profit seeking behavior leads to companies raising prices far more than they should while keeping wages stagnant. So they raise the prices on food and other common goods, consumer buying power goes down while overall profitability goes up.

Smaller businesses in the middle like restaurants fall apart because they don't have access to the benefits of economy at scale and they can't pay people enough nor can they raise prices (because they're servicing people that have smaller and smaller buying power).

The solution to this problem should've been done decades ago and that's tying minimum wage to inflation. But now we're seeing the end result of what happens when you don't. A lot of restaurants skirted by on extremely low cost labor but in times when said labor market gets fed up, they move on to the larger chains that can afford to pay 15+ an hour and a large correction occurs which kills small town restaurants.

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