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

611–620 of 918 posts

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

#611

Post by BuckRogers »

dragonwriter wrote: post #437
orwin wrote: post #282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, the states and the federal government can too, by destroying money (IE increasing taxes). Inflation, especially dollar inflation, is more complicated than 'printing more = inflation'.

> No, the states and the federal government can too, by destroying money (IE increasing taxes). Destroying money (taxes, when fiscal policy is viewed through the lens of monetary effects) is counterinflationary. Creating money (spending) is inflationary. Broadly speaking.

It seems that you're largely restating what the comment you replied to was saying. If not, please correct me because I may be missing some nuance that I shouldn't have. In that line of thought though, cutting taxes without cutting spending increases inflation. Because the borrowing of newly printed money doesn't stop. Without 1:1 cuts in spending it's problematic. That's what happened in 2017[0], a ~2.3 trillion dollar "charge" without increasing wages or jobs. As we see today. We were already at historically low tax rates while deficit spending, and then taxes were cut. I'm not a "supply side" guy so I'm not surprised that things didn't work out. Maybe someone will try to link growth in 10 years back to it. :)

I'm for low taxes of course. I don't know too many that aren't. But they have to make sense as well.

[0]https://www.thebalance.com/cost-of-trump-tax-cuts-4586645

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

#612

Post by s1artibartfast »

valeness wrote: post #357
lettergram wrote: post #274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lol I’m not “placing blame” I’m stating what I see as facts. Russia will not surrender. The longer the Ukraine is in the war, the higher likelihood the people of Ukraine starve. We can make an argument that they shouldn’t surrender. That’s a moral position. I’m pointing out if we don’t figure it out within the next few months you’re not going to get the food from the region, as people are fighting over it. I don’t ca…

What the OP is saying is you could have phrased your comment like you did in your last paragraph here. Nobody disagrees that until it ends the situation will create further instability; but it can end with Russia giving up or surrendering as well. There is no global objective truth that Russia will not surrender; so by saying "I'm just stating facts" you're actually making a normative claim instead of a descriptive o…

It is common and reasonable to exclude unlikely if conditions from statements.

They are just claiming that Russian concession is much less likely than a Ukrainian one, which I think many would agree with.

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

#613

Post by fnordpiglet »

suplywut wrote: post #446
adamdusty wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everything is subject to supply and demand. Why would those four things not be? Even if the money was coming from the government they would all still be subject to supply and demand. Even if money didn't exist those things would all be subject to supply and demand. What exactly do you propose to change that?

It’s pretty simple; stop coddling some peoples figurative identity. Rather than make a social game of merely “seeing” normal humans who are “special” in politically correct traditional terms, end specialness. Subject Powell, Bezos, and the like to the same material truth as the masses. Electoral turnovers improve economic outlooks for public: https://www.nber.org/papers/w29766 Give everyone equal policing authority:…

Are you saying if there’s five boxes of food and ten people supply and demand don’t matter under some political regime?

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

#614

Post by geoka9 »

lettergram wrote: post #463
asah wrote: post #386

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where do you get this "fact" that Russia won't surrender? More powerful armies have been forced to retreat from unsuccessful invasions.

I dont see any way Ukraine can win. There’s a lot of real information out there (military reports). I’m not going to dive into that and debate it. There are also many channels covering this topic mostly neutral: Here’s one: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=KILAY2miQdI Here’s another: https://m.youtube.com/c/AlexanderMercourisReal In short, for Russia to lose would be the end of Russia. They have to be seen as hitting th…

> would be the end of Russia

It's not such a far-fetched idea. Russia (the empire) has been falling apart since 1991 (possibly even 1917, but that's a scale that doesn't matter much for the outcome of this war).

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

#615

Post by TomatoTomato »

ghaff wrote: post #511
cjrp wrote: post #491

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's interesting, in the UK it's generally fixed for 2/3/5 years but then reverts to a pretty lousy rate (unless you remortgage to another fix). If you're lucky you fixed just before this all started, and won't have to remortgage for another few years when rates might be dropping again.

There are adjustable rate mortgages in the US, but far and away the norm is 15 or 30 year fixed.

OTOH, almost all commercial loans including real estate is adjustable in the US.

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

#616

Post by sacred_numbers »

upupandup wrote: post #226
desireco42 wrote: post #174

My experience is that prices went 100% - 150% up. Things I care about went double, no amount of statistics engineering can change this fact. Fuel prices along, while it came down a little, they are still way high.

Yet theres ppl, even on this thread that claims your views are conspiracy theory, that you are lying about what you saw.

They are not necessarily lying, but they are clearly an outlier. My spending is maybe a few percent higher and prices for some of the things I buy are even down recently. Everyone has a different experience, which is why we have aggregate statistics to quantify what the overall effect is.

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

#618

Post by TomatoTomato »

nativespecies wrote: post #385
bamboozled wrote: post #344

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your mortgage repayments won't go up too?

With a fixed rate mortgage? Uh, no.

And if you have been renting and saving money to buy a house, your purchasing power is exponentially lower when both factoring both home prices and interest rates all while your rent is increasing.

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

#619

Post by NotTameAntelope »

lettergram wrote: post #290
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.

The issue has to do with the harvest coming up. The next harvest will come from fields with less fertilizer and higher fuel prices. We can expect corn prices in the fall jumping significantly. Next year will even be worse, we are using a fuel reserves now and fertilizer will still be an issue (unless peace is made with Russia). I’m expecting a significant increase in the next 2-3 months then again in 15-16 months.

Small semantic issue, but “make peace with Russia” implies they’re not the aggressors.

Russia can end this tomorrow, by withdrawing from Ukraine.

You probably didn’t mean to imply anything, but it’s a sensitive topic, semantics matter.

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

#620

Post by BitwiseFool »

boole1854 wrote: post #450
Consultant32452 wrote: post #392

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Eric Weinstein says it better than I could, with helpful pictures that make it obvious why the inflation metric we see must always be bunk. https://twitter.com/EricRWeinstein/status/155093416819585024...

And par for the course for Weinstein, he makes an interesting point while wrapping it in a vale of needless conspiracy mongering. Yes, the rate of inflation is slightly different for different products and services (it is a "field" rather than a "scalar"). Yes, it would be nice if the government reported the entire inflation "field" rather than just the top-of-the-line aggregated inflation number. Does this mean the…

>"Does this mean the government or economists are "lying" (his word)?"

The way I see it, it is in the government's interest to "lie" about the rate of inflation because it is advantageous for them to do so. Inflation is used as a tool in monetary and fiscal policy. "Inflating away" debt is a real strategy and policy.

"Lie" is a loaded term, and perhaps this is a limitation of our vocabulary. Because inflation has no universal definition or universally accepted measure, economists and statisticians have leeway when they calculate what the rate of inflation is. For the sake of argument, let's assume there is a "real" inflation rate. Having an "official" number lower than the real number means the government saves money on expenses that are indexed against inflation, and they get to repay debt with inflated money. The converse of this is costly for the government, as an official number higher than the real number means they have to spend more than expected. Therefore, it makes sense to me that the government is incentivized to under-report, and that they can do so because of how complex the calculations are. Is it a lie to switch to a different model, one that happens to result in lower official numbers? That's up to your own interpretation.

Post reply on HN