351–360 of 461 posts
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That's what equality means and what they fought for.
There is more at play than simply equal rights. Housing supply hasn't risen to keep up with demand. Education and healthcare costs too have grown significantly compared to pregnant-and-barefoot-in-the-kitchen eras.
I don't really understand the argument at the heart of this article, which is "we should include interest rates in CPI". How do interest rates effect everyday people exactly, other than price inflation on goods and services (which is included separately in CPI)? The only way seems to be interest rates on personal loans and mortgages. So if anything, we should only include interest rates in proportion to how many peop…
The price of beef went up. A lot. As a result, quite a lot of people stopped eating beef. Should we remove the beef from the CPI basket?
Similarly, the mortgage rates skyrocketed, and the number of home purchases plummeted. But many more people would buy a home, if only they could afford it. Just like more people would start eating beef again, if they could afford it.
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mendacious explanations What specific lie are you calling out here?
The fact that he hasn't described all possible formulas, but instead included exactly the one that affirms his known preconceptions. He would not have published this thesis had it not supported him. He'd have looked around for some other metric.
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I never understand the "in X dollars" argument, especially when looking back longer than about a decade. The CPI only considers a certain basket of goods, it's not representative of a cost of living (that's what this thread is about), various things change price at radically different rates. How much was an iPhone or Xbox in 1960 dollars? What was the typical cable TV bill? What did a typical American pay for a Calif…
The comparison doesn't work on manufactured products. You can really only compare commodities. Anything that is manufactured has a multitude of factors that will reduce cost of a product significantly over time. If the circuitry in an Xbox were constructed in 1960 no government on the planet would have been able to afford it. It would also be difficult to find enough power to run it or a place big enough to build it…
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>If it means your wages buy 30% less, and inflation is 30%, then your nominal income hasn't increased. If so, something has gone very wrong, and it sounds like your employer is screwing you over. Employers use the fake numbers to determine adjustments. It's not like they are necessarily screwing you over if they don't give you a 30% raise due to inflation either lol. They have to come up with extra cash because of in…
> It's not like they are necessarily screwing you over if they don't give you a 30% raise Yes, but I wasn't asking about whether the raise is 30%. If you have a 12% raise during 30% inflation then you can buy 18% less, for example. > That's not a profit dude. It's the simple phenomenon of everything costing more. Since most businesses are hurt by inflation, stocks do not keep up with rapid inflation. It wouldn't have…
If you're supposed to be getting raises anyway, how much of your raise is due to inflation and how much is due to advancement? I am making more money than I did before the pandemic but that was almost 4 years of grinding to reach that point. All indications I've seen point to people's wages not keeping up with inflation. Wages always lag behind other prices, and usually by a lot.
>It wouldn't have to be a profit for my point to work.
Your point was precisely that "gains" in the stock market make up for other downsides of inflation. This just doesn't work out. Our economy relies on the value of money remaining stable.
>But have you looked at stocks? The S&P 500 went up not just more than 30%, it went up more than 50%. Stocks did profit. And that's versus the relative peak. Any other baseline in the range of 4 years ago and the increase is even higher, and from 5 years ago it's up 75%.
Sorry but stocks are supposed to profit. In real terms there is probably a slight profit. The rest of the increases are pure devaluation of the dollar. At some point, businesses will likely struggle to remain profitable as everyone tries to cut costs.
>You can't make everyone happy, but I was focusing on the experience of a relatively average person.
I think stable money would actually be the best-case scenario and would make people happier than high inflation.
You have a very distorted idea of what is a "relatively average person"... Most people don't have money in the stock market (which I've already argued is not making up for inflation anyway). Most people don't own houses either. As much as I hate banks, lenders getting screwed due to inflation is terrible for the economy.
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>On that note, houses are unquestionably more valuable today. For one, they are twice the size they were 60 years ago. We can all agree that a bigger house has more value than a small house, at least within reason. You can fit more in it, it is more comfortable, etc. and that is valuable. They are also a lot safer. That too is more valuable. Keep in mind, demand was higher with the baby boom than it is today. Houses…
That is mostly survivor bias and cost of materials difference. We’ve used up most of the stores of large timber causing the price of it to go way up. At the same time the price of construction grade metal has come way down. Thus large beam construction has become a luxury. As for housing quality, post war tract homes were wildly worse. My wifes family still owns the tract home they lived in growing up. It was exposed…
Have you ever seen an old 2x4? This isn't "large beam" but it's obviously higher-quality than new 2x4s.
>As for housing quality, post war tract homes were wildly worse. My wifes family still owns the tract home they lived in growing up. It was exposed concrete, exposed roof and no ductwork until a HUD funded remodel in the 70s. It’s also 750 sq feet. A modern double wide trailer is higher quality.
There used to be some homes built to low specifications. But most were built super solid. Ductwork, insulation, and just about anything else can easily be upgraded. Compared to classic European houses, ours are temporary trash.
>A modern double wide trailer is higher quality.
You just discredited yourself there to everyone who knows even a little bit about houses. Go find a 50 year old trailer and see how that looks lol. American houses are optimized for size at the expense of permanence, and trailers are no different. They are cheap for a reason. Although they can be good for some people (no judgement here), it's just not on par with either a new house or an old one.
I recommend people use many different indicators to get a mental model of inflation, and you will notice that CPI does not represent inflation well. The memes of Arby’s 5 for $5 becoming 4 for $10 are more informative than the CPI numbers. Don’t let the shock at the grocery store wear off – it’s real and painful despite what the news tells you. True inflation would measure the amount of prosperity achieved per hour w…
Subway fares for NYC [1]
- 2 fare increases in the first 60 years of operation.
- 17 fare increases in the next 60 years.
Note that even with the fare increases in the last 60 years, once adjusted for inflation, the cost of MTA fares were actually going down until 1984 or 40 years or so, when fares really exploded [2]
[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_City_transit_fares
[2] https://old.reddit.com/r/nyc/comments/11u0s3z/nyc_subway_far...
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That's missing forest for the trees. The more important part is that average 3.7 people household was a single-income one . I would rather disagree with GP's: > My point is that inflation isn’t abstract and it isn’t a law of nature. It’s a deliberate approach to stealing your prosperity while you cheer it on. A lot of the inflation, including how suddenly a single-income household isn't a viable option for most peopl…
> That's missing forest for the trees. The more important part is that average 3.7 people household was a single-income one. That's not necessarily true. Per FRED ( https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LRAC25FEUSM156S ), in 1963 about 44% of women aged 25-55 were in the workforce. That's obviously much lower than the ≈96% rate for men, but it implies that the average couple had closer to 1.4 incomes. The comparable rat…
We just dont know what % of those were single mothers, widows, divorcees or single women, etc.
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That's missing forest for the trees. The more important part is that average 3.7 people household was a single-income one . I would rather disagree with GP's: > My point is that inflation isn’t abstract and it isn’t a law of nature. It’s a deliberate approach to stealing your prosperity while you cheer it on. A lot of the inflation, including how suddenly a single-income household isn't a viable option for most peopl…
I think people are asking the wrong questions when it comes to inflation. It's not which president is at fault... It's who is profiting from it? It's not the minimum wage worker. It's not the standard office worker. What class has shown absolutely insane growth in wealth and income in the face of what looks like crippling inflation?
Your standard retiree on the other hand who holds a lot of bonds that got absolutely hammered by inflation and rising interest rates is not doing so well.
I don't really understand the argument at the heart of this article, which is "we should include interest rates in CPI". How do interest rates effect everyday people exactly, other than price inflation on goods and services (which is included separately in CPI)? The only way seems to be interest rates on personal loans and mortgages. So if anything, we should only include interest rates in proportion to how many peop…