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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

#301

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.

The majority of R voters don't care about authoritative sources. In fact, authority when it comes to information is a negative in their view, based on all available evidence (ie elections over the past few decades). We're well past the point that debates matter.

> The majority of R voters don't care about authoritative sources.

Hence the joke: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=2X93u3anTco&t=98s

Re: US Wholesale Inflation Rises by Most in 3 Years

#302

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…

The US and EU have reported broadly similar inflation numbers for the last five years or so, with the EU generally being a little lower. If your thing was true, you'd expect a vast gulf in prices to have opened up, but it doesn't really seem to have.

Anecdotally, I was in SF once or twice a year for a few years before the pandemic, and it felt like mostly similar prices to Dublin (an expensive European city). I've also been back a few times since the pandemic, and it now feels somewhat more expensive than Dublin, but not dramatically. Which is about what you'd expect if the official inflation figures were broadly correct. Obviously this is super-anecdotal, mind you.

Re: US Wholesale Inflation Rises by Most in 3 Years

#304
post #279
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

I asked perplexity and there are a few independent calculations (ShadowStats, Truflation, Billion Prices) that put the rate at about 10% https://www.perplexity.ai/search/what-is-the-us-inflation-ra...

> ShadowStats

Just no:

> Responding to prior criticisms made by economist James Hamilton, John Williams explained in a private phone call that Shadowstats does not actually recalculate BLS data, rather, the Shadowstats CPI merely adds a constant to the officially reported numbers.[28]

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shadowstats.com#Negative

    SHADOWSTATS(t) = 1.9 + 0.0055*t + CPIAUCNS(t)
* https://old.reddit.com/r/badeconomics/comments/3zik5t/shadow...

* https://www.fullstackeconomics.com/p/no-the-real-inflation-r...

> Truflation

* https://old.reddit.com/r/AskEconomics/comments/1beg6db/how_r...

> Billion Prices

They actually published code so other folks could recreate:

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

Re: US Wholesale Inflation Rises by Most in 3 Years

#305
post #279
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

I asked perplexity and there are a few independent calculations (ShadowStats, Truflation, Billion Prices) that put the rate at about 10% https://www.perplexity.ai/search/what-is-the-us-inflation-ra...

We're losing 10% of our money annually. That's absolutely insane.

Re: US Wholesale Inflation Rises by Most in 3 Years

#306
post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's wild, I had no idea they had gotten that high. When I was in college (2012-2016), the most expensive places were in the $50k-60k range, which already was quite absurd. The fact that they've grown so much even in the past decade is mind-boggling.

You entered college over a decade ago. We’ve had a lot of inflation in that time. From an inflation adjusted perspective, I’d actually rather pay $80K now than to have had to pay $60K in 2016 when you graduated. You also probably know that most students don’t pay full price due to sliding scales.

I understand. I just didn't really have any other expenditures anywhere close to that high at the time; I've never purchased a car, and like most college students, I certainly never purchased a house back then. I hadn't paid much attention to tuition prices since graduating, so seeing the number now made the inflation feel much more visceral to me than comparing the prices I can recall of much less expensive things I purchasing to what they are now.

Re: US Wholesale Inflation Rises by Most in 3 Years

#307
post #266
post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I haven’t checked, but I would guess this number even includes things like NSA outposts (since NSA is part of DoD) and embassies (which are protected by Marines).

Generally, intelligence officers/employees (such as people who work at NSA) deploy to bases, or FOBs. I'm sure there are a handful of "NSA outposts" but this isn't generally how it works.

I’m thinking of things like Room 641A. Is that regarded as a base?

Re: US Wholesale Inflation Rises by Most in 3 Years

#309
post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The methodology and data is all publicly available. Just go to bls.gov. https://www.bls.gov/opub/hom/cpi/ Every time I've seen someone talk about "real" inflation or unemployment they're just applying a different view on the same BLS data. Metrics like CPI or PPI are derived via a formula to create an indicator. A benchmark that should be apples to apples over a period of time. It's not meant to be comprehensive. But…

> Using 2010 census population data, we select the urban areas from which data on prices are collected and choose the housing units within each area that are eligible for use in the shelter component of the CPI. > Participation in the Consumer Expenditure Survey is voluntary. However, when you participate, you are representing thousands of other households like yours. In order to be able to create quality statistics,…

Do you have a proposal for a better way to do it?

Re: US Wholesale Inflation Rises by Most in 3 Years

#310
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

I don't trust any government numbers regardless of who the president is. There will always be pressure to fudge the numbers to make who ever is running things look good.

There use to be a billion prices project out of MIT that got shutdown years ago because it show higher inflation than what the rulers at the Fed wanted to show. I believe its funding was pulled or something like that.

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