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

The USA Inflation Rate by Truflation Is 4.21%

truflation.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 75 posts

Re: The USA Inflation Rate by Truflation Is 4.21%

#61

Post by dragonwriter »

Sad90sNerd wrote: post #55
dragonwriter wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Ok, if you were the government and I asked you to measure rent increases - what would you do? Would you look at the cost of renting on average in a city and compare them to last years? Seems like the most obvious way... Well, that is not how the government does it now. Except, in fact, it actually is how they do the rent portion of CPI. (Well, its not city rent averages, they do same-unit rent changes and average t…

Even if that is true (which I am doubtful of), what is the merit of OER at all? Why use it if its A) not really what people are paying B) relying on people not in the market to guess what the going rate is and C) consistently underestimates actual rent. I see no purpose for it besides the government liking the C) part... Remember folks, inflation is "temporary" or, i mean, "transitory", or I mean, yes we have inflati…

> Even if that is true (which I am doubtful of), what is the merit of OER at all?

The merit of OER is that is a measure of the cost of using owned housing as housing instead of renting it out.

> Why use it if its A) not really what people are paying

It is a measure of what people are paying, as an opportunity cost.

> B) relying on people not in the market to guess what the going rate is

Potentially a legitimate concern.

> C) consistently underestimates actual rent.

Its not trying to measure actual rent and is not consistently below actual rent (which, again, is tracked separately.)

Re: The USA Inflation Rate by Truflation Is 4.21%

#62

Post by matt_langston »

Sad90sNerd wrote: post #11

There is no way that matches reality, where does the person publishing such a chart even live? Do they buy eggs or pay rent? Here is a real alternative - John William's shadow stats. He simply measures inflation as the government used to in the 80s and 70s, and surprise surprise its more like 10% or 14% - no phony "Owner's equivalent rent". http://www.shadowstats.com/alternate_data/inflation-charts

I wonder what people think of Mike Maloney's educational video on inflation:

"Inflation: The Biggest Scam In The History Of Mankind" https://youtu.be/iFDe5kUUyT0

Is there anything incorrect in that presentation? John William's shadowstats is mentioned.

Re: The USA Inflation Rate by Truflation Is 4.21%

#63

Post by jxramos »

gruez wrote: post #52
jxramos wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder if we all tabulated all our expenses in the most fine grained detail and calculated our own personal rates of inflation how meaningful it would be to have percentiles of our population to say things like 50% of citizens experience a personal inflation rate of x.xx%. That would be very fascinating. I'm almost there myself with some web order scraping I've been playing with. It's a lot of work but once I tackl…

Sampling bias is going to be a real issue because there's going to be a strong incentive for people who think inflation is high, or is actively experiencing high inflation to participate. Also, if you're only tracking your expenses and not using a fixed basket, the index will end up including lifestyle inflation as well.

that's an excellent point. Clarify a bit the notion of the fixed basket, I'm thinking mostly of unit prices. I think that could get a bit fuzzy too because of practices like shrinkflation cluttering up the analysis. I think SKUs should actually be tied to fixed things like weight where applicable. I wonder what the rules are surrounding that, basically make it so that if you change the weight of a product you have to issue a new SKU. Might be a messy figure overall but still capable of shedding some insight people would be interested in I'd think.

Re: The USA Inflation Rate by Truflation Is 4.21%

#64

Post by [deleted] »

jxramos wrote: post #63
gruez wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sampling bias is going to be a real issue because there's going to be a strong incentive for people who think inflation is high, or is actively experiencing high inflation to participate. Also, if you're only tracking your expenses and not using a fixed basket, the index will end up including lifestyle inflation as well.

that's an excellent point. Clarify a bit the notion of the fixed basket, I'm thinking mostly of unit prices. I think that could get a bit fuzzy too because of practices like shrinkflation cluttering up the analysis. I think SKUs should actually be tied to fixed things like weight where applicable. I wonder what the rules are surrounding that, basically make it so that if you change the weight of a product you have to…

[deleted]

Re: The USA Inflation Rate by Truflation Is 4.21%

#65

Post by jonas21 »

pengaru wrote: post #53

Pre-pandemic I was considering getting this[0] gateleg table from IKEA, it was $199. I passed on it, then the pandemic hit. In 2021 I decided I wanted to get the table and it was permanently out of stock because Pandemic, but still $199 on the site. Because of its unavailability I ended up polling the site periodically, noting the price. Consequently this object became one of my reference points for pricing throughou…

Your reference point on inflation is one quirky piece of furniture sold by a single retailer?

Re: The USA Inflation Rate by Truflation Is 4.21%

#66

Post by gruez »

jxramos wrote: post #63
gruez wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sampling bias is going to be a real issue because there's going to be a strong incentive for people who think inflation is high, or is actively experiencing high inflation to participate. Also, if you're only tracking your expenses and not using a fixed basket, the index will end up including lifestyle inflation as well.

that's an excellent point. Clarify a bit the notion of the fixed basket, I'm thinking mostly of unit prices. I think that could get a bit fuzzy too because of practices like shrinkflation cluttering up the analysis. I think SKUs should actually be tied to fixed things like weight where applicable. I wonder what the rules are surrounding that, basically make it so that if you change the weight of a product you have to…

By "fixed basket" I'm talking about the issue of people getting higher quality goods as their income increase, or buying more or less of something (eg. takeout) as their lifestyle changes.

Re: The USA Inflation Rate by Truflation Is 4.21%

#67

Post by jones6ofMont »

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #41
Sad90sNerd wrote: post #11

There is no way that matches reality, where does the person publishing such a chart even live? Do they buy eggs or pay rent? Here is a real alternative - John William's shadow stats. He simply measures inflation as the government used to in the 80s and 70s, and surprise surprise its more like 10% or 14% - no phony "Owner's equivalent rent". http://www.shadowstats.com/alternate_data/inflation-charts

> John William's shadow stats. He simply measures inflation as the government used to in the 80s and 70s, and surprise surprise its more like 10% or 14% I don’t understand how anyone who knows about basic compound growth can take this seriously. 10% annual inflation from 1970 would mean prices have increased by 150X since 1970. That would mean houses would have cost a couple thousand dollars and a dozen eggs would ha…

Basic stuff like eggs, noodles, rents align quite consistently with shadowstat. Even iPhone top model prices after 2010s seems to follow shadowstat numbers. The problem is China production. We enjoyed years of "deflations" pressure from "Made in China" and USD being hugely popular. Going forward with immense dedollarisation pressure (petrorubbleyuan) and rising cost of Made in China and lower quality from Made in India (India is currenrly in early stage of manufacturing curve so quality is not there yet) would increase our inflation. Even if it is not going Turkeye style, a persistent high inflation of 6-9% EVERY YEAR without strong USD demand will make shadowstat numbers more and more realistic than government's.

Re: The USA Inflation Rate by Truflation Is 4.21%

#68

Post by pengaru »

jonas21 wrote: post #65
pengaru wrote: post #53

Pre-pandemic I was considering getting this[0] gateleg table from IKEA, it was $199. I passed on it, then the pandemic hit. In 2021 I decided I wanted to get the table and it was permanently out of stock because Pandemic, but still $199 on the site. Because of its unavailability I ended up polling the site periodically, noting the price. Consequently this object became one of my reference points for pricing throughou…

Your reference point on inflation is one quirky piece of furniture sold by a single retailer?

> Your reference point on inflation is one quirky piece of furniture sold by a single retailer?

... "one of" ...

"The IKEA Norden gateleg table has been one of IKEA’s best sellers for a while, and it’s for good reason." [0]

I fail to see how this is a "quirky piece of furniture". Judging by the frequency they appear on CL and how many of my personal contacts either had one or knew family/friends having one, I can believe the above quote regarding its best-seller status. They're quite common.

[0] https://www.houszed.com/ikea-norden-gateleg-table-hack/

Re: The USA Inflation Rate by Truflation Is 4.21%

#69

Post by Sad90sNerd »

dragonwriter wrote: post #61
Sad90sNerd wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even if that is true (which I am doubtful of), what is the merit of OER at all? Why use it if its A) not really what people are paying B) relying on people not in the market to guess what the going rate is and C) consistently underestimates actual rent. I see no purpose for it besides the government liking the C) part... Remember folks, inflation is "temporary" or, i mean, "transitory", or I mean, yes we have inflati…

> Even if that is true (which I am doubtful of), what is the merit of OER at all? The merit of OER is that is a measure of the cost of using owned housing as housing instead of renting it out. > Why use it if its A) not really what people are paying It is a measure of what people are paying, as an opportunity cost. > B) relying on people not in the market to guess what the going rate is Potentially a legitimate conce…

> The merit of OER is that is a measure of the cost of using owned housing as housing instead of renting it out.

I don't follow - can you help me understand? To me there are two metrics that matter: the price of property, and the price to rent property.

Hypothetical: If 50% of the houses in the US were bought by older folks in the 1970 - 1990 (when housing prices were more propositional to income) and they generally don't plan to sell until 2030 - what does it matter what they would rent at today?

I just don't understand the logic here, and to the fact that they are included in the CPI at all means that the CPI is necessarily skewed when it comes to housing imho

Post reply on HN