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US annual inflation declines to 7.7% in October vs. 7.9% expected

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Re: US annual inflation declines to 7.7% in October vs. 7.9% expected

#251
post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please explain how literally directly increasing the M1 money supply doesn't cause inflation. Everyone got money for free. Things that are free, tend to have less value.

And by “free” we mean “added to the gigantic mountain of debt our children must pay off“

You should keep your concern trolling about federal debt focused on things that are actually bad and not bail outs for citizens who are constantly getting fucked by the economy.

Re: US annual inflation declines to 7.7% in October vs. 7.9% expected

#252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also it is worth mentioning that part of the major reason accounting for inflation is car price. It’s going down now as chip makers produce more and prices go down further.

Hopefully that helps with new car pricing. Dealers are still selling well above MSRP.

Car lots need to be knocked down a peg or ten. Car sales folks are the scummiest folks on earth and they have been empowered by this disaster of a market for too long.

The overwhelming majority of car sales people know almost nothing about cars. That's already how you know that their industry is basically useless.

It's also extremely predatory. Anyone trying to pay a 30K mark up on a rav4 prime is being swindled (even if they think they're not). You (the sales person) should prevent obviously stupid car sales (or shit like 25% apr hellcats to US soldiers), but of course not, they're greedy!

Re: US annual inflation declines to 7.7% in October vs. 7.9% expected

#253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Shadowstats is bullshit for a number of reasons - you can read up on most of them on the official articles and publications and justifications on the BLS website -- which are generally written by statisticians with maths or econ PhDs with no vested political interest, unlike Shadowstats which is written by an MBA who needs to sell a newsletter. But you can very easily debunk Shadowstats by just averaging the ridiculo…

> on the BLS website This is begging the question though. If the problem is BLS, then using BLS as a reference that BLS isn't the problem is blatantly fallacious. The claim is that BLS is deceiving us... so it doesn't make any sense to use them to adjudicate whether they're deceiving us or not. You see the problem right?

No. Because the BLS publishes their methodology, back tests it, and compares it to other weights and methodologies (which they publish full datasets for). You can then compare it to other independent measurements like the MIT Billion Prices Project and see that over an 8-year period, the BLS measurements differ from public pricing info by less than 1% which is less than 1/10th of a percent per year.

http://www.thebillionpricesproject.com/datasets/

There certainly is room for measurement error in something as complex as an inflation index that takes into account so many data points and weights, but the answer to resolve that complexity isn't "trust grifters selling newsletters to goldbugs".

Re: US annual inflation declines to 7.7% in October vs. 7.9% expected

#254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anything positive YoY means prices have gone up overall over the last year. For prices to have gone down in general over the last year, the YoY would have to be negative. A headline of 6.9% would mean prices have gone up.

The slope of price v time would be going down if they'd posted 6.9% yoy. The discussion is around how the numbers should be interpreted. There isn't confusion around what they have literally reported.

Nope. You are continually overlaying data with different X axis and trying to draw conclusions and sound authoritative and it’s just sloppy and irresponsible.

The instantaneous slope would be negative if the last month happened to observe a slight decrease, true. But the slope of the line between last year and this year would be positive.

Both statements can be true:

1. prices just fell slightly since last month

2. prices have risen overall since last year

EDIT: you edited your comment I’m not going to update mine.

Re: US annual inflation declines to 7.7% in October vs. 7.9% expected

#255

Anyone notice that brand name soda (looking at you Coke) has increased almost 100% while the generic/house brand has had slight increases. I feel like Coke is testing the pricing limits of its customers especially with the smaller packaging and these prices will not come back down.

A 20oz bottle is easily 2.29 now compared to roughly 1.79 not long ago.

This price has everything to do with what consumers will pay for convenience and almost nothing to do with manufacturing costs, which are a tiny fraction of that. (Shipping and delivery are probably more, both for energy and labor.)

Sellers do not determine the market price for anything. Buyers do by what they will pay. Sellers can specify a price, but any transaction actually happening is only determined by the buyer. (Setting the price can be intended to apply psychological manipulation to the buyer, which often works.)

If you are complaining about the prices of anything, your complaint is not with the seller, it is with other buyers who have proven they are willing to pay it.

Re: US annual inflation declines to 7.7% in October vs. 7.9% expected

#256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They effectively said, "The increase went down." It would have been much clearer for them to say, "The increase has slowed."

This is like the 3rd derivative, right? e.g. we now have a slightly lower rate of acceleration towards the cliff than before?

Second derivative:

  p = price
  t = time
  dp = change in price
  dp/dt = change in price over time = inflation
  d^2p/dt^2 = change in change in price over time over time = change in inflation over time = what we are talking about

Re: US annual inflation declines to 7.7% in October vs. 7.9% expected

#257
post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's not really much we can do about this. Artificial price ceilings were tried in Venezuela and it only contributed significantly to their massive food shortages they experienced. Most notably it resulted in a big reduction in the variety of food available because while some of the biggest companies could survive with the new lower prices (and work with the gov directly to set those prices) the bulk of small/medi…

One thing we can do is give the NLRB actual teeth to enforce its laws.

I agree that that would be a good thing, but it won't lower consumer prices.

Re: US annual inflation declines to 7.7% in October vs. 7.9% expected

#258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They effectively said, "The increase went down." It would have been much clearer for them to say, "The increase has slowed."

This is like the 3rd derivative, right? e.g. we now have a slightly lower rate of acceleration towards the cliff than before?

What would the fourth derivative of inflation be? I can’t get my brain to work for that.

Re: US annual inflation declines to 7.7% in October vs. 7.9% expected

#259
post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I haven’t been paying anything since non-penalized forbearance started. Why pay when interest is 0% and there’s no penalty for not paying? I’ve been using money that normally goes to loans for other bills. I imagine plenty of other people are buying more stuff with the money so i imagine it does contribute to inflation

> Why pay when interest is 0% and there’s no penalty for not paying? Just spitballing here… But maybe you should pay because you promised to pay it, the costs were borne by the vast majority of taxpayers who did not take out such loans, and because tradesmen and other perfectly deserving parties do not get access to such easy money?

An economic strategy should not depend on people behaving irrationally.

Re: US annual inflation declines to 7.7% in October vs. 7.9% expected

#260

Anyone notice that brand name soda (looking at you Coke) has increased almost 100% while the generic/house brand has had slight increases. I feel like Coke is testing the pricing limits of its customers especially with the smaller packaging and these prices will not come back down.

I'm pretty low income ATM and I simply don't buy Coke zero or anything like that much anymore. I drink water, or tea. Loose tea is still pretty economical, even considering water and heating costs.
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