Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

U.S. annual inflation rate drops to 8.5%

bls.gov

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

251–260 of 918 posts

Re: U.S. annual inflation rate drops to 8.5%

#251

Post by ericd »

jrochkind1 wrote: post #142
mdip wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Food is all over the place these days as long as that place is "up". We just stopped going to Taco Bell all together. It's kind of crazy. I can't find a reason to go there any longer. As a kid, they were so cheap[0], the running joke was that $20 worth of food there would kill a person. It was about properly priced -- despite being a fan of Taco Bell, their consistency between restaurants (better, today) was terrible…

Kind of a side issue, but I too have noticed that Taco Bell has gone from one of the cheapest fast food places, to actually being more expensive than other fast food options. This started before the pandemic/recent economic weirdness, but perhaps has become even more so.

That might just be corporate strategy? Probably different people running it now than 30 years ago, in the 90s…

Re: U.S. annual inflation rate drops to 8.5%

#252

Post by pc86 »

maerF0x0 wrote: post #222
randomdata wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Corn seems to be a good leading indicator here[1]. Cash bids were $4 in 2019, $5 in 2020, $6 in 2021, $7 at the start of 2022, $9 when the war in Ukraine broke out, down to $8 in June, and now at $7.50 where it has remained stable at since the beginning of July. Which suggests that things are indeed slowing. [1] Which likely ends up being a proxy for oil, but as a farmer I watch food commodities much more closely.

How much corn are you getting for $9?

The same amount you were getting for $4 three years ago.

Re: U.S. annual inflation rate drops to 8.5%

#253

Post by jdhn »

metatranca wrote: post #137
ChrisLomont wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>But my electricity price literally doubled. What supplier and location, out of curiosity?

Similar in Florida with FPL(the utility company) [0]. We are now paying more. These are the new rates [1]. [0] https://cleanenergy.org/blog/fpls-holiday-surprise-810-milli... [1] https://www.fpl.com/content/dam/fplgp/us/en/rates/pdf/res-ju...

I'd love to know what Duke is going to do. I have a 1950s block home with less than 3 inches of insulation in the attic (Duke Energy efficiency audit put it at a charitable R-11) and original windows that I was told by the HVAC person "leak like a sieve". Electric bill this month may hit $400.

Re: U.S. annual inflation rate drops to 8.5%

#254

Post by trillic »

maerF0x0 wrote: post #222
randomdata wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Corn seems to be a good leading indicator here[1]. Cash bids were $4 in 2019, $5 in 2020, $6 in 2021, $7 at the start of 2022, $9 when the war in Ukraine broke out, down to $8 in June, and now at $7.50 where it has remained stable at since the beginning of July. Which suggests that things are indeed slowing. [1] Which likely ends up being a proxy for oil, but as a farmer I watch food commodities much more closely.

How much corn are you getting for $9?

1 bushel, approximately 56 pounds.

Re: U.S. annual inflation rate drops to 8.5%

#255

Post by [deleted] »

jliptzin wrote: post #219
radioactivist wrote: post #97

So the year over year CPI increase each month this year (starting from January) was 7.5%, 7.9%, 8.5%, 8.3%, 8.6%, 9.1%, 8.5%. So this value has been jumping around a bit as it has been going up. This drop is being taken as good news -- but I worry whether this is really a meaningful drop or whether we are just over interpreting what could be a fundamentally noisy metric?

Avg gasoline prices are down 20% in 2 months. Is that noise? https://ycharts.com/indicators/us_gas_price

[deleted]

Re: U.S. annual inflation rate drops to 8.5%

#257

Post by ChrisLomont »

300bps wrote: post #8

Energy prices down 4.6% Gasoline prices down 7.7% Food prices up 1.1% Shelter prices up 0.5% So the minor overall reduction was by far gasoline.

The percentages you listed are not equally weighted; they're weighted by what average consumers spend. People spend vastly more per month on housing and food than they do on gasoline.

So the conclusion that gasoline was the biggest factor in the overall reduction is not true.

Here's where you can dig out the weightings used from the BLS [1]

[1] https://www.bls.gov/cpi/tables/relative-importance/weight-up...

Re: U.S. annual inflation rate drops to 8.5%

#258

Post by h2odragon »

dawnerd wrote: post #207
bluedino wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The vehicle we bought cost over 10% what the same vehicle would have cost last year. Groceries are 40% more than they were. Utility bill is up nearly 50%. Clothes and shoes don't seem to be more expensive, they just don't seem to go on sale anymore. Our neighbors had a new roof installed and spend almost double what we did 3 years ago, we have nearly the same house and the same contractor did it. Fast food has gone w…

Cat food has almost doubled and they’re still having problems stocking it.

We've stared buying the cheapest "people" tuna cans for our elderly cat; I think they've cheaped out too far on the cat food and its not really "food" anymore.

Re: U.S. annual inflation rate drops to 8.5%

#259

Post by jeromegv »

rootusrootus wrote: post #223
arbor_day wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

EVs are ~1% of cars and ~5% of new car sales. It seems like we have another 5 years until those scale effects start to really kick in.

I agree, it will take some time for EVs to really take off. And the dynamics are difficult to predict. If even 5% of cars become electric, it will really move the needle on the retail gas pricing, which might slow EV adoption, etc. I expect it might go in waves. Although EVs have such a dramatic running cost advantage that as capital costs and range anxieties are addressed, the adoption rate will probably be supply l…

EV growth of the last few years was nothing compared to the increase size of the average car (more SUV and pickup sales in proportion, compared to standard “cars”).

So really the EV market is still insignificant and gaz consumption for the average household has gone up, not down.

Re: U.S. annual inflation rate drops to 8.5%

#260

Post by starkd »

chaorace wrote: post #149
starkd wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But they've lost a lot of credibility in being able to make those projections. The inflation-is-transitory call was a major blunder.

Yes, well... they make their own predictions, so it's not really a matter of whether the public trusts the Fed as long as they are internally unified. Public inflation expectations certainly do play a role in inflation, but, as Volcker showed us in the 80s, it doesn't matter how much credibility you have with the public if you're willing to slam on the brakes hard enough.

But I think a lot of the Fed's strategy was jawboning the rate increases - aka offering "forward guidance". Notice how the rate hikes were fairly measured and tepid. They didn't even start the actual QT until a few months ago. There's a limit to how effective jawboning is, and it requires the public have credibility in the Fed to do so. Eventually, you have to back it up with actions.
Post reply on HN