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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

#291

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.

08-20 money supply tripled but no inflation.

I'm not sure that provides an invalidation. There was unprecedented asset inflation during that period. Consumer inflation jumped at the same time the market realized that they were no longer making money hand over fist holding assets, no doubt in response to realizing that the only way to make money going forward was to produce something of value and charging accordingly.

You can print money endlessly, stuffing it into people's bank accounts limitlessly, and as long as they don't spend it you won't see inflation. But once they do start to spend it, the capacity to spend is magnified. Stocks, real estate, etc. provided essentially that bank account... until now.

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

#292

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wealth and income expectations play into current savings. I expect my savings to go up by $20k thanks to this, so I will shift some of my current savings to spending.

> I expect my savings to go up by $20k thanks to this... You rate the risk of SCOTUS rejecting the program at 0%?

No, but I do rate it low.

Regardless, it will shift my consumption patterns.

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

#293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Store brands have very little advertising costs, for one. Coke spent $4B on advertising in 2021 [0], which is about a quarter of their costs. [1] [0] - https://statstic.com/coca-cola-advertising-costs/ [1] - https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/KO/cocacola/cost-g...

I guess I must be wrong, but I'll never understand why Coke needs that much advertising. Or anything "that well known". The argument is maybe they are that well known because of advertising, but I just don't think that's the case. Maybe for a crappy product, but not a good product. With Coke it's the quality (and consistency) of the product. I've never tasted anything "as good" as Coke. A new fresh cold can has a bit…

In blind taste tests, Coke performs about as well as Pepsi. However, people still overwhelmingly seem to like Coke, so it's really because they like the brand. If they reduced advertising, their brand will slowly be eroded.

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

#294
post #248

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.

The myth is that inflation was caused primarily by this. It wasn't. Inflation is being driven by a combination of factors, the biggest being supply chain and war in Europe.

Not to mention suppliers and retailers increasing profit margins surreptitiously under the guise of "inflation".

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

#295

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.thebil…

Yes. They didn't refer to the MIT Billion Prices Project, they refereed to BLS itself, to debunk the claim that they "misused cover of academic theory" unlike what you did. You can't just say someone didn't fail epistemically just because you, 10 minutes later, didn't.

Meh, this is just a different form of an ad hominem... There are literally hundreds of pages of documents written about CPI justification and process, and several documents specifically showing how Shadowstats is garbage (e.g. https://www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/2008/08/art1full.pdf).

Take quarrel with the actual research instead of the domain they're hosted on since as OP pointed out, many of them are published by third party academics with no financial or institutional connection to the BLS.

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

#296

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

It would create more competition, and put more money into people’s pockets.

Putting more money in people's pockets will not reduce inflation.

I don't see how it will create more competition.

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

#297

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Store brands have very little advertising costs, for one. Coke spent $4B on advertising in 2021 [0], which is about a quarter of their costs. [1] [0] - https://statstic.com/coca-cola-advertising-costs/ [1] - https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/KO/cocacola/cost-g...

I guess I must be wrong, but I'll never understand why Coke needs that much advertising. Or anything "that well known". The argument is maybe they are that well known because of advertising, but I just don't think that's the case. Maybe for a crappy product, but not a good product. With Coke it's the quality (and consistency) of the product. I've never tasted anything "as good" as Coke. A new fresh cold can has a bit…

Coke is only one of their products, they probably need some advertising to promote their other 200 brands: https://www.coca-colacompany.com/brands

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

#298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

CPI up 20% month on month in month 1. CPI down 1% month on month for the remaining 11 months. That would result in what they are saying.

Ah, so not mismatched prices/goods, but mismatched temporally.

It's just about how are you measuring the slope? Like, when you first learn derivatives and the math teacher draws a line between two points on a curve, then draws another from points closer together, then draws the tangent, then goes through how you get to a derivative function etc.

The yoy is just using two points very far apart. The mom is using two points closer together. It would be nice but practically impossible to measure it instantaneously, mom is about as good as we get.

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

#299

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.

If you check Coke's financial statements, you'll see that although revenue has risen quickly, cost of revenue has risen about as fast, leading to relatively unchanged gross profit margins (36% so far in 2022, compared with 40%+ in every year from 1985-2014 and between 33%-39% from 2015 to 2021). Word from industry press is that the rising price of aluminum has been a major driver of the increased costs. I don't know…

Generic brands often don't come in aluminum cans, assuming the industry rumours are true.

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

#300
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?

If the government decided it wants me to receive loan forbearance at 0% interest, then it’s my civic duty to accept it.

After all, I don’t want to be labeled some kind of troublemaker.

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