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U.S. annual inflation rate drops to 8.5%

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

#471
post #337

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They just brought the 2 for $5 breakfast sandwich deal back. They've had the "buy one sausage muffin/biscuit or hashbrown and get another for a dollar", though.

The BOGO Big Mac deal is what always pulls me in.

I'm big on the fish sandwich and breakfast burrito. I went there the other day to use the free hashbrown coupon. They cancelled it saying they had no hashbrowns in stock. Seems pretty hard to believe that a McDonald's ran out of 5 cent frozen hashbrowns that come in industrial sized bags. I almost readded it paying for it to test the theory.

It will be interesting to see if locations start pulling tricks to avoid honoring the deals in the app.

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

#472

Some random things I've noticed in my personal experience during the last few weeks that are inflated at way above 8.5%: Gasoline (gallon) - 3.00 last summer, 3.75 today (25% increase) Towing a Car (~50mi Round Trip) - 125 last summer, 350 today. (180% increase!) Bag of Dorito's - 4.50 last summer, 6 today (33% increase) Can of Spray Paint - 4.25 last Summer, 6.50 today (54% increase)

In Central Texas, gas is down from $5/gal in June to under $3/gal now.

In Southern California gas is down from $6 to $5.50

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

#473
post #299

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is not happening unfortunately, ever. They are hiring more people in IRS to shake down working people.

Nah, the IRS is in complete shambles, as anyone who’s had to deal with them over the last couple years can confirm. It seems pretty likely that they’re just trying to unshamble it.

Adding tens of thousands of people will solve their problems and won't increase audits on the average person?

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

#474

It's always interesting how on this website the economic news is actually worse than what the indicators say. Good or bad news, they're always lying to make it seem better than it is.

Because if they tell the truth and crash the market the outcomes are even worse for people

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

#475
Pretty much everything is still going up, and it'll all be be even more expensive next year. A reduction in inflation doesn't mean things get cheaper... they just get expensive slower than before. Doesn't change the fact that things became insanely expensive really fast the past couple years, and we're not likely to see real relief for a long time (if ever).

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

#476
post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1) Greed isn't a variable here - McDonalds today can't be more greedy than McDonalds in 2020. McDonalds in 2020 was already capped out as far as greed goes. They have been the poster child for corporate greed for decades. If greed could make prices go up they'd have been selling $3 burgers back in 1950. 2) If prices go up by 50% without an increase in costs, profit should go up by much more than 50% and share prices…

Why would you pick the situation that is clearly impossible when we're talking about inflation? Of course costs have increased. If prices go up by 50%, and then you subtract the increase in cost, then any measure over 0 is potentially a greed-driven number. It seems unlikely that zero companies are riding the wave of inflation acceptance in the population. At least some companies must be increasing their costs becaus…

I feel like there is an opportunity for an app here that lets you input what you buy and see how the price has increased compared to the competition. There seems to be a lack of automated price comparisons here. I guess people can compare prices when shopping in store but if all companies raise their prices, I'd imagine some people would just stop buying if they knew about the price collusion more easily. I thought a cool app for the Apple AR goggles is to allow you to overlay the inflation increase of prices as you walk through a grocery store.

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

#478
post #410

Great. All I know is I'm trading a lot more time for money this year. Way less takeout, avoiding toll roads unless it saves at least 30 minutes, fewer streaming services (will renew on a show-by-show basis), and food is getting so crazy I might start going to multiple stores to try and save money instead of my one consolidated trip to Wegmans. I'm also stuffing my freezer with meat and have a year's supply of non-per…

Buying extra meat when it's on sale and storing it in a chest freezer is probably the best "investment" that most families can make. It usually has a higher ROI than buying stocks or whatever. Even during inflationary times, retailers occasionally end up with excess supplies of some cuts of meat or advertise loss leaders to boost store traffic so you can buy a lot if you have freezer space to store it. Just be carefu…

You can also, not buy meat, and avoid the electricity cost of running an additional freezer!

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

#479
post #299

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nah, the IRS is in complete shambles, as anyone who’s had to deal with them over the last couple years can confirm. It seems pretty likely that they’re just trying to unshamble it.

Adding tens of thousands of people will solve their problems and won't increase audits on the average person?

It might, the auditing level right now is extremely low. I was saying that it’s probably not the main point of the additional funding, though, so much as getting closer to a baseline of reasonably functional taxing authority. They’re currently drowning in even basic processing.

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

#480
post #146

What are the actual metrics they use to measure inflation? My electric bill is 33% higher than previous years, my gas bill is similar. City/Water/Sewer doubled. Trips to the grocery store are up close to 20%, and gasoline doubled. Everything you actually purchase day-to-day is up far more than the inflation benchmarks, so much so it’s beginning to feel like propaganda. I overnight went from thinking “I make good mone…

The 1980 and prior CPI calculation is still calculated here: http://www.shadowstats.com/alternate_data/inflation-charts As inflation was measured in the 1970's, we are experiencing ~15% consumer inflation.

What percentage of household spending did they allot for high speed home internet access in the 1970s inflation statistics? How about people's budgets for cell phones and personal computer hardware?
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