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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

#321

Post by jjk166 »

kevin_thibedeau wrote: post #45
nimbius wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

According to the Federal Reserve, for many years, inflation in the United States has run below the 2 percent goal. higher prices for essential items, such as food, gasoline, and shelter, add to the burdens faced by many families, especially those struggling with lost jobs and incomes. At the same time, inflation that is too low can weaken the economy. When inflation runs well below its desired level, households and b…

Gasoline prices are not higher. Above $4 was commonplace across the country 20 years ago. Now that only exists in high tax states and large metros. Gas is cheap in the US.

20 years ago (ie mid 2000s) was a unique time of extremely high gas prices with 2008 being the all time high both adjusted for inflation and absolute. Adjusted for inflation, oil is currently higher than any point between 1990 and 2004, and in absolute terms since 2022 its been higher than any point outside of the 2006-2014 period.

Re: US Wholesale Inflation Rises by Most in 3 Years

#322

Post by qzw »

tmaly wrote: post #310
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

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.

What’s crazy is that of all the fudgeable numbers in economics, consumer inflation is the one they should try to be the most honest about. It’s something that consumers can more or less directly observe, so having an official number that’s much below people’s “wallet meter” is doing nothing but erode trust in government. In fact, given that a steady inflation rate actually leads to bigger and bigger price increases, most people are going to feel worse about it at a visceral level. If the government wanted to build credibility with the public, they’d come up with a metric that better aligns with people’s actual economic situations. But then that might lead to people demanding higher wages, so I guess it’s a nonstarter in America.

Re: US Wholesale Inflation Rises by Most in 3 Years

#323

Post by ivape »

churchill wrote: post #319
jurking_hoff wrote: post #308

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[dead]

Since I'm holding onto half the odds, it's closer to 50%. but, since I'm motivated to stay alive, your chances probably look worse.

Fighting amongst ourselves when we should be shaming the mayonnaise and baloney sandwich over-pricers. That’s the problem with the petite bourgeois and proletariat.

Re: US Wholesale Inflation Rises by Most in 3 Years

#324

Post by ivape »

thisisit wrote: post #176
ivape wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This was happening for years before the tariffs.

Just because something is happening for years doesn't mean there cannot be extra incentive to make it worse today. But you just handwaved tariffs away. and did the inflation go up by 0.9% in a month in those years?

Do you not want to appropriate accountability to anyone that isn’t sitting around in a top hat and monocle?

WE are shitty greedy people. Shitty greedy people will use tariffs and become shittier and greedier. So yes, you are right, tariffs will make it worse.

This society lacks civil sense, moral sense, ethical sense, communal sense, common sense, from top hat to bottom bare feet.

This only gets fixed together.

Re: US Wholesale Inflation Rises by Most in 3 Years

#325

Post by deeg »

tim333 wrote: post #279
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

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...

I briefly scanned the BPP data and it was pretty close to the official CPI. The BPP is usually a bit higher, and for a short time noticeably higher, but they generally converge.

https://thebillionpricesproject.com/datasets/

Re: US Wholesale Inflation Rises by Most in 3 Years

#326

Post by deeg »

tmaly wrote: post #310
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

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.

Do you have any evidence it was shut down by the Fed? I looked briefly at the BPP numbers and they aren't that far off the CPI. There were even a few times it was lower than the CPI. There was a 2 year period that BPP was noticeably higher but it eventually converged.

https://thebillionpricesproject.com/datasets/

Re: US Wholesale Inflation Rises by Most in 3 Years

#327

Post by Aloisius »

elzbardico wrote: post #51

Frankly, I haven't seen a single country where I spent any significant amount of time, where official inflation numbers were not seeing as a complete joke by the common folks. And my experience usually matched it. There's plenty of space to hide reality when building a price index. Price index do not capture the reality of most people cost of living. They don't capture the family that have to buy margarine instead of…

This is the the Producers Price Index. It tracks wholesale prices which are far less affected by locality. It also doesn't measure housing prices at all.

The PPI is not a measure of consumer inflation. It's a leading indicator for it.

Re: US Wholesale Inflation Rises by Most in 3 Years

#328

Post by johnsimer »

tim333 wrote: post #279
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

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...

truflation has inflation at 2% right now, not 10%

https://truflation.com/marketplace/us-inflation-rate

Re: US Wholesale Inflation Rises by Most in 3 Years

#329

Post by Workaccount2 »

sjsdaiuasgdia wrote: post #316
Workaccount2 wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>We have plenty of examples The issue isn't that we have plenty of examples (which is actually a handful, people always go to the same 2 or 3 cases, but I digress), it's that we have orders of magnitude more counter-examples that are ignored. It's important to not build your world view on headlines, because headlines are headlines because they are outliers. It's not news when companies competitively adjust prices, it…

There's more than 2 or 3 here for you to review: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_price_fixing_cases Your worldview is incredibly naive if it doesn't include substantial collusion and cooperation among the capital class.

I don't know how you can call a list of ~50 cases over the last 30 years "substantial" when there are millions of active competitive markets.

Re: US Wholesale Inflation Rises by Most in 3 Years

#330

Post by ivape »

deeg wrote: post #287
marknutter wrote: post #277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

McDonald's was never sourcing chicken for their chicken nuggets from outside the country.

Tariffs raise the price in tangential ways. Tariffs on Chinese steel means US chicken wire producers switch to more expensive US sources. Increased demand for US sources make it even more expensive. Farmers buy the more expensive chicken wire, passing the added expense to McDonalds, which passes it on to you.

The chicken nuggets were edging past $5 dollars before the tariffs, during the Biden era. Mcdonalds owns Chipotle so they are well aware of premium pricing for regular food. They applied the same pattern to Mcdonalds, the same way Starbucks once convinced everyone coffee can be as much as $8. This is all before tariffs.

No one's giving tariffs a pass, but we are giving regular people a pass for some reason. It takes people to do all of this.

To further my point, the Gap owns Old Navy and Banana Republic. It's all the same material mostly, but it's tiered pricing (Old Navy cheapest, Gap, to Banana Republic most expensive). Over time, they raised the floor of pricing at Old Navy. Financial engineering is not just happening in the stock market.

The floor for prices on certain things have just gone up with no real reason other than "its about time we raised these prices", and it's happening in a collective way.

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