Live data from Hacker News

US Wholesale Inflation Rises by Most in 3 Years

bloomberg.com

221–230 of 412 posts

Re: US Wholesale Inflation Rises by Most in 3 Years

#221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would you think those are good sources for a question like this?

maybe I am wrong to do this, but I run Gemini 2.5 Pro in ‘research mode’, ask a question I am interested in, wait usually about 2 to 4 minutes and Gemini summarizes a large number of sources for me. I think there is a lot of bias everywhere, and I thought that this sort of averages some of the noise away. I think grandparent comments about what constitutes a military base vs. a facility are interesting. I was a defen…

I've had too many lies told to me by all of these "AI" tools to trust anything I don't already know to be true without verifying the referenced sources myself. At that point, if I'm giving the information to anyone else, I might as well communicate the sources rather than an AI's impression of the sources. There's just no value add to me beyond identifying potential sources in "research mode".

Re: US Wholesale Inflation Rises by Most in 3 Years

#222

Over the years I have read a few articles or blogs that make the argument that if government inflation figures in the US were calculated as they do in Europe, then our reported US inflation figures would be much higher. Can anyone here verify this? Our main problems involve under the table unreported to the public military expenditures. If you look at a map of our military bases, we have many bordering China. I think…

Fred has the data: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/CP0000EZ19M086NEST# https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/SUUR0000SA0 I’m driving, it’s difficult to put them on the same chart and normalize. But they are very similar. There are differences in methodology (housing, healthcare) but those generally add a small amount to US inflation chained index vs HICP.

Please don’t use your phone while driving.

Re: US Wholesale Inflation Rises by Most in 3 Years

#223

Over the years I have read a few articles or blogs that make the argument that if government inflation figures in the US were calculated as they do in Europe, then our reported US inflation figures would be much higher. Can anyone here verify this? Our main problems involve under the table unreported to the public military expenditures. If you look at a map of our military bases, we have many bordering China. I think…

American consumer debt is also a different beast in the US because households tend to counter inflation and higher prices by shifting over their monthly spending to credit cards. Most Europeans use credit only for certain goods and mostly pay the full amount off every month. This creates an elasticity in the US, where inflation leads to higher prices which slowly leads to higher household debt, which makes recessions more grave when they do appear. Europeans are instead quicker to move to cheaper stores and start buying cheaper goods in bulk.

Re: US Wholesale Inflation Rises by Most in 3 Years

#224
post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Over the years I have read a few articles or blogs Without linking the blogs or articles it’s hard to say much. Inflation is a topic that attracts a lot of quackery. There are a lot of blogs and websites that go viral from time to time with claims that the “true” inflation number is dramatically higher. There is a quick reality check you should run whenever you encounter these claims: Take the claimed inflation num…

Good response. I might suggest not using housing because so many people treat it like an investment, which means its value goes up faster than inflation (if it's a good investment). But otherwise I totally agree with you.

> its value goes up

Its price goes up. "Price is what you pay, value is what you get"; houses do not increase in value over time.

Re: US Wholesale Inflation Rises by Most in 3 Years

#225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That interview was unfortunately timed (taped before nomination, broadcast afterward). My takeaway was that they are not trying "just not report the numbers" _yet_.

Do you think his position has changed since that interview?

I think his position changes between breakfast and lunch.

Re: US Wholesale Inflation Rises by Most in 3 Years

#226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah. Most people should build their own inflation index. It's not hard whence you realize the biggest expenditures are usually 1) mortgage/rent, and 2) food. I wouldn't be surprised that given the rate hiking in recent years going along with higher food price, some people see dramatic "inflation". Ofc one can always say that No this is not the academic way to define inflation, but who cares?

In 2022 I scraped the current prices for things I bought on amazon the year before, and got a 7% increase. Unfortunately amazon stopped providing order reports recently... ``` $ inflation -y 2021 -f items.csv 86 successful items, 30 failed items 2256.76 total 2021 2427.62 total now +170.86 (+7%) difference ```

That's a pretty neat idea. Do the price aggregation sites (eg. camelcamecamel) do anything like that?

Re: US Wholesale Inflation Rises by Most in 3 Years

#227
post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They didn't say that. Your reading comprehension is poor.

> If you look at a map of our military bases, we have many bordering China. I think our total number is close to 900. I would grant them the benefit of the doubt if English wasn’t their native language, but they’d identified as a US citizen elsewhere in the thread and their name strongly implies native speakership. In the US, this conversational construction in this context is most reasonably interpreted as the secon…

The sentence starts with “If you look at a map of our military bases”, which refers to all US military bases, not just the ones bordering China. The second sentence refers to that totality of bases.

I’d grant that there is a bit of ambiguity, but insinuating an “insane claim” is jumping the gun on a misreading that should have been fairly obvious in light of the “insanity”.

Re: US Wholesale Inflation Rises by Most in 3 Years

#228
post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People didn't need to go to college because nobody cared. Employers were able to look at qualities of the actual person, not some outside attribute bolted onto the side. What changed was Griggs vs. Duke, which outlawed effectively all filtering mechanisms except a college degree, forcing the hand of employers. That still didn't mean the workers had to comply, though. What do you think would happen, with respect to em…

A 1970 court case doesn't explain why my childhood friends' parents could afford to own 3 bedroom houses and have 1-2 kids while working at chain restaurants, distribution centers, and hospitality. This was in the 1990s. People cannot have this life now with the same jobs. Even with college degrees, it's barely attainable. People are doing the same amount of work but what would have been their wages are being diverte…

That is explained by housing also becoming more valuable. It wasn't that long ago that owning a house was considered a necessary evil at best, not the path to riches as it is recognized as today. Historically, you were lucky if you got your money back out of a house when you decided to sell it. Nowadays, if one doesn't get a double digit percentage return on investment they are crying like it is the end of the world. That shift in mindset allows homeowners to charge more when they sell their home[1]. That is not a product of inflation.

[1] Which also further perpetuates the idea of housing being an investment with said homeowner realizing a tidy return in that ability to charge more, which sees even more people wanting in on the action so that they too can make a fortune; lather, rinse, repeat.

Re: US Wholesale Inflation Rises by Most in 3 Years

#229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Honesty would require admitting that the parties are different. They are not the same, they have different values, and we can see that by who gains and loses power in the party. Which actions are unacceptable, and which actions are rewarded. The difference is stark!

"We have no political system at all, we have a sort of corporate party with two wings, both financed by the national security state..." -Gore Vidal

All the other stuff, all the heady discourses, all the piety about the downtrodden, be then the minorities from one side, or the poor rural white man from the other, it is just a fucking smoking mirror, just tools to have loyal soldiers to their cause.

Post reply on HN