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A $100k Prize for a Decentralized Inflation Dashboard

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Re: A $100k Prize for a Decentralized Inflation Dashboard

#111

Post by lend000 »

paulryanrogers wrote: post #108
lend000 wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then people will tend to buy less of them to fit their budget. Here is the most telling chart: inflation-adjusted wages in the US [0]. They never change, because the CPI uses a survey to determine what the average American is buying, and how much it costs, then they adjust weights based on how much they spend on it (which cancels out the cost because people change their buying preferences based on current prices) and…

Is it possible people are buying less by volume, even if amounts spent level off? For example smaller homes, less healthcare, getting less educational value per (adjusted) dollar spent?

Yes, that's exactly it. Such changes are not well reflected in the CPI model.

Re: A $100k Prize for a Decentralized Inflation Dashboard

#113

Post by cyanydeez »

throwawaygh wrote: post #35

> Inflation is a monetary phenomenon, a function of money printing Is it, though? Are hotels and used cars more expensive this year because of money printing?

inflation is a function of peoples willingness to use todays cash for tomorrows utility.

this money machine goes brrrr reality is a poor mans understanding of central bank financing and is mostly a paranoia fueling cryptocurrency speculation.

there is a need for more transparency in inflation numbers, but really, you have to be paranoid of governments numbers to think they arnt sufficiently independent.

Re: A $100k Prize for a Decentralized Inflation Dashboard

#114

Post by perl4ever »

acover wrote: post #92
perl4ever wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>certain categories feel way off If you live in Vancouver, it's easy to forget 93% of the country doesn't. From 1995 to just pre-pandemic, my home (in the US, far away from California) appreciated significantly less than inflation.

I was looking at a city specific inflation measure.

I believe the standard inflation measures in the US are based on people living in cities, as I do.

Re: A $100k Prize for a Decentralized Inflation Dashboard

#115

Post by acover »

perl4ever wrote: post #114
acover wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was looking at a city specific inflation measure.

I believe the standard inflation measures in the US are based on people living in cities, as I do.

Sorry, what I meant was I was looking at the data for my specific city. For some indicies statistics Canada has a breakdown to specific cities.

Re: A $100k Prize for a Decentralized Inflation Dashboard

#116

Post by human »

sellyme wrote: post #96
human wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Loss of quality is totally missed in the CPI. Take this example. A restaurant hires rookie waiters because they can’t pay the more experienced staff. Your meal still costs $50. But is it worth this same? Not at all.

Where I live it's been about a decade since waiters were anything except glorified conveyer belts that serve no purpose except to move my food from the kitchen to my table, and if anything that has drastically increased the quality of my meals. I'm not really sure what value an experienced waiter would provide.

I recommend you try some well-rated restaurants where the waiter explains the food carefully, tells you where it’s sourced and with which wine to pair it all. Maybe that’s not your thing but I’ve been to many restaurants lately where the staff doesn’t even know the menu.

Re: A $100k Prize for a Decentralized Inflation Dashboard

#117

Post by human »

_jsdw wrote: post #39
throwawaygh wrote: post #35

> Inflation is a monetary phenomenon, a function of money printing Is it, though? Are hotels and used cars more expensive this year because of money printing?

Indeed! If somebody was able to print a trillion dollars and stash it away in their bank account, I don't see why any observable inflation would occur.

Inflation is actually money supply times velocity of money. In your example the velocity would be zero, so no inflation.

Re: A $100k Prize for a Decentralized Inflation Dashboard

#118

Post by throwawaygh »

trts wrote: post #77
Geee wrote: post #63

Real inflation is very hard to measure, because it's not only prices that change - more often the product loses quality while price stays the same. Either way, you are getting less for what you pay for, but only the price change is measured as inflation. In addition, people switch over to cheaper alternatives when products get more expensive - meat is replaced with vegetables for example. This changes the average bas…

Many things have also gained in quality substantially, such as vehicles, electronics, and durable goods. A new car not only lasts longer and requires less maintenance, is more fuel efficient, safer, but is often loaded with amenities like navigation, entertainment, self-driving. How do you make an equivalency to something from the 90s? Meanwhile digital content and communication services have become free and ubiquito…

> College tuition? It's up 2-5X in the past 20 years.

This isn't going to be a popular take, and I have no love lost for Academia (see my post history). But...

College tuition has the same effect as vehicles: they've gotten more expensive over time, but the quality of the product has massively improved from a consumer's perspective.

1. Education: students have way more support now than they did 20 years ago, or especially 40 years ago. It's quite hard to over-state how much more support students are given today. This is especially true at places with higher tuition, such as LACs or elite universities. It's REALLY HARD to not make it through a four year degree these days, and failure modes typically involve some sort of violent crime or substance abuse disorder. And that's true even for canonically hard fields. With a small handful of exceptions, "weeder courses" don't really exist anymore. And even where they do, there's considerable hand-holding.

2. Housing: dorms these days are still way over-priced relative to what you can get in the private market, but quite nice compared to what was available 30+ years ago.

3. Amenities. This is probably the largest. Students have access to world-class gym facilities -- the type that you can't even buy outside of large cities. Rock walls, huge pools, full weight lifting gyms, yoga studios, squash courts, tennis courts, cheap/free fitness classes, etc. all within a 5 minute walk of your bed.

A lot of the increase in the price of college is attributable to the product becoming much "better" -- it's never been easier to get a degree and dorm list has never been more comfortable.

Re: A $100k Prize for a Decentralized Inflation Dashboard

#119

Post by sellyme »

human wrote: post #116
sellyme wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where I live it's been about a decade since waiters were anything except glorified conveyer belts that serve no purpose except to move my food from the kitchen to my table, and if anything that has drastically increased the quality of my meals. I'm not really sure what value an experienced waiter would provide.

I recommend you try some well-rated restaurants where the waiter explains the food carefully, tells you where it’s sourced and with which wine to pair it all. Maybe that’s not your thing but I’ve been to many restaurants lately where the staff doesn’t even know the menu.

> where the waiter explains the food carefully, tells you where it’s sourced and with which wine to pair it all.

These are all functions that can be served equally well by an inanimate object. Why pay someone $25/hr every night to say where a dish was sourced when you can just add a couple of lines to the description of that item on your website? I'd definitely have a much better experience if that money was spent on better ingredients, or just not spent and reducing the cost of my meal.

> Maybe that’s not your thing

There's no maybe about it, but I don't think it affects my point.

Re: A $100k Prize for a Decentralized Inflation Dashboard

#120

Post by anythingdude321 »

wrs wrote: post #83
anythingdude321 wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Including the computation and data on-chain enables other parties to use it trustlessly and verifiably. If you, for example, wanted to make an algorithmic central bank that reacted to inflation numbers you would need on-chain CPI in order to do that. Similarly you may want to index your interest rate to the CPI in some way (like LIBOR). It becomes a lot more useful when on-chain than in a central database

It’s not trustless, because you’re trusting the scraping NGO to put the correct price data on the chain. You can verify that it came from the NGO with a simple signature; you don’t need the chain for that.

nah fam that won't likely be the final topology of the network. you can have oracles all the way down and a slashing risk for those that deviate significantly from the consensus prices and CPI numbers. so you're trusting the economic design of the system to appropriately incentivize the participants to give honest data
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