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US Wholesale Inflation Rises by Most in 3 Years

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Re: US Wholesale Inflation Rises by Most in 3 Years

#291

Post by tim333 »

Buttons840 wrote: post #151
neuroelectron wrote: post #104

Whatever the problem is, it's everything but unicorn funding. We can be sure of that on this forum.

When I was about 20 I started listening to Sean Hannity, and while I no longer agree with anything he says, I do appreciate the glimpse I got into his way of thinking. I mention this because... I can't tell you how many times I've heard the idea that success in free market capitalism comes from offering goods and services to customers with the right balance between quality and price, and that good quality and price i…

I can think of a lot of people who have got on by gaining favour of those who have wealth and power, the Altmans, Musks etc have done some of that. I'm not sure about the wealth and power to eliminate competition though. Tesla, OpenAI etc have competition but mostly out execute it. Or did in the Tesla case.

Re: US Wholesale Inflation Rises by Most in 3 Years

#292

Post by throw0101a »

diego_moita wrote: post #192
bobbylarrybobby wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's nice to have agreed-upon, citable facts though, even if only so that voters know who's full of crap during a debate. When the next R candidate says that Trump handled inflation beautifully, it's important to be able to point to an authoritative source that shows that that claim is BS.

Yes, it *would be* nice to have well-informed voters and intelligent and well-argued discussions. But we'll never live in a place like that. We're stuck in the Facebook/Twitter/WhatsApp world. Democracy is a circus managed by the monkey cage.

> Yes, it would be nice to have well-informed voters and intelligent and well-argued discussions.

"Feelings don't care about (your) facts." — not Ben Shapiro, https://www.amazon.com/Facts-Dont-Care-about-Feelings/dp/194...

"You don’t bring facts to a feelings fight." — Cole Christie, https://www.in8create.com/blog/herding-squirrels-ep-03-w-col...

Re: US Wholesale Inflation Rises by Most in 3 Years

#293

Post by rsynnott »

Workaccount2 wrote: post #237
abtinf wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Gold. The purchasing power of Gold has been remarkably consistent over the long term. That is, if you convert the gold to dollars, how many eggs could you buy? To learn more, read up on the work of Keith Weiner of Monetary Metals, or listen to the early episodes of his podcast “The Gold Exchange”.

The problem with gold is that it's price fluctuates just like any other commodity. The practical uses of gold accounts for only ~8% of gold mined, while half is for vanity (jewelry, a luxury product) and the rest for speculation and reserves. Similar to fiat, most of the value in gold is in people believing it has value.

> Similar to fiat, most of the value in gold is in people believing it has value.

Much moreso, really, because the value of money is kinda sticky; it's really difficult for it to change _quickly_ because a lot of stuff is essentially priced months or years in advance. Even the pretty dramatic inflation in developed world countries in '21-'23 would not be particularly exciting price action for gold, which really can swing quite dramatically in a short period of time.

Re: US Wholesale Inflation Rises by Most in 3 Years

#294

Post by _DeadFred_ »

AtlasBarfed wrote: post #282
Tesl wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We all know Trump voters didn't give two shits about the price of eggs. That's not why they vote for him.

They are voting for chaos, because the establishment in the Republican and Democratic parties simply do not care about the everyday people. As an environmentalist, I essentially have no party, and so while I hate Donald Trump, I understand exactly why he was voted into office.

One is selling off our national parks/forests, removing protections for marine sanctuaries, but you essentially have no party?

Re: US Wholesale Inflation Rises by Most in 3 Years

#295

Post by vel0city »

mark_l_watson wrote: post #183
jack_h wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're truly curious I would say the best way to start is to get a basic understanding of economics and how our current system actually operates. It's also important to look up the data as it actually exists rather than consuming conclusions from commentators without investigating further. For instance your initial post seems to imply that we aren't balancing our defense vs social spending and are spending way too…

Just my opinion (but I did work in the defense industry from 1974 to 1998), but I just don’t believe the published ~ 800 billion defense spending numbers. A few presidents ago, the chairman of the joint chiefs publicly said that 7 trillion in military spending is unaccounted for. Also, I admit to getting much of my information from professor Dr. Jeffrey Sachs, an economist. I took an online economics class from Whart…

> 7 trillion in military spending is unaccounted for

If someone gave me $100, and I handled it without keeping track, that's $100 not accounted for. But we do know that I was given $100, and the money went somewhere we just don't know where. But it doesn't necessarily mean that this was shadow money outside of the larger picture budgets, people still know I was given $100. Its not like now there's somehow $200 spent because I was given $100 and I failed to account for $100.

So thinking about the $800B defense budget, if they fail to properly track $150B of that budget, that's another $150B added to that pile of unaccounted for money. But its not an extra $150B that got spent, its still a part of that $800B.

Re: US Wholesale Inflation Rises by Most in 3 Years

#296

Post by throw0101a »

neilv wrote: post #268
jcranmer wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apparently, they've decided to go with "just not report the numbers." (Source: https://www.foxbusiness.com/politics/trumps-bls-pick-could-p... ).

I still like the quote, "Reality has a well-known liberal bias."

> I still like the quote, "Reality has a well-known liberal bias."

— https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_Colbert_at_the_2006_Wh...

Re: US Wholesale Inflation Rises by Most in 3 Years

#297

Post by throw0101a »

Havoc wrote: post #36

Are there inflation indicators that aren’t government controlled? Don’t think anything coming out of trump influenced bodies is worth the paper it’s on anymore

> Are there inflation indicators that aren’t government controlled?

There have been research programs that collected the data themselves:

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MIT_Billion_Prices_project

Re: US Wholesale Inflation Rises by Most in 3 Years

#298

Post by _DeadFred_ »

avgDev wrote: post #249
tombert wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It still baffles me that he has convinced so many of his followers that he's going to lower grocery prices by raising prices. It almost doesn't even make grammatical sense, let alone any practical sense. Before someone decides to try and explaining to me that tariffs will bring back work to the US and help our economy, I just need to say that is orthogonal to the point of inflation . It's possible that the tariffs wi…

Tariffs need to be higher to bring back manufacturing back to the US. Most companies are looking for countries other than China with no tariffs and bringing it back to US is not even a consideration. Plus, by the time you can start manufacturing in the US it would take at least 1-3 years to get a factory ready. Then, you have a new president and these might go away. Too much risk to make rash decisions on moving manu…

And to build new factories you need things like steele, etc. Lots of which now have... high tariffs on them.

The policy is not intended to bring back manufacturing, or it would be tuned to enable/encourage the inputs needed for bringing back manufacturing.

But tariffs sure have encourage a lot of people to meet with the president and make 'special' deals with him to get themselves/their interests exemptions.

Re: US Wholesale Inflation Rises by Most in 3 Years

#299

Post by rsynnott »

marknutter wrote: post #233
aurareturn wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s the tariffs. You’re assuming that everyone will raise the price and have the same goals. Some businesses will see it as an opportunity to undercut and gain market share. After all, total profit = sales margin * sales volume. You can increase your profit by increasing your volume because you kept your prices unchanged while your competitors decided to increase prices.

Tariffs don't affect products that are produced locally.

This is true if and only if those products have no imported inputs, and if tariffs aren't causing general inflation which is forcing up wages of the people making them via cost-of-living increases.

Ultimately, unless you're an autarky (in which case tariffs are in any case irrelevant), high tariffs should be expected to lead to broad price increases, even for goods which are not directly imported.

Re: US Wholesale Inflation Rises by Most in 3 Years

#300

Post by churchill »

jurking_hoff wrote: post #271
churchill wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Tariffs did not make the price of your BLT go up, it’s greed. What do you want to do about it, Stalin? Use the power of the state to legislate away human greed? Imprison these greedy people? Impose price controls (which have a long, storied history of not working and only leading to shortages and queues)? We build economic policy around human nature, not otherwise. Humans will always seek to maximize profit at all c…

[dead]

What are the odds that you lose your life in the process?
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