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US Consumer Price Index up 4.2%

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Re: US Consumer Price Index up 4.2%

#141

Post by uep »

tharmas wrote: post #38
tananaev wrote: post #5

All of the increase is from energy. Oil prices.

Some businesses use that as cover to increase prices even when their costs may not have actually been affected by the price of energy. Never waste an opportunity to put the big squeeze on. Steadily rising prices will be the norm from now on. What will be interesting to see is how fast the corporate elite figure they can boil the frogs without them noticing too much. $50.00 hotdog is coming.

A small number of companies control the meat supply in the United States. If you decide that you don't want to buy that $50 hot dog, you likely won't have many comparable options.

Re: US Consumer Price Index up 4.2%

#142

Post by ashgf1 »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #68
23ahgfqa wrote: post #10

The Iran conflict will continue on a low flame (occasional pinpricks like now) forever. It serves the US Energy Dominance Agenda against China, Japan, India and the EU. The Trump administration does not care about "its" population. There were already rumors early in the Trump term that Trump would not mind a recession so that his real estate cronies could buy cheap foreclosures. So it is all a double win for the olig…

> It serves the US Energy Dominance Agenda against China, Japan, India and the EU …how? What is this agenda? Juicing short-term energy exports? That’s not a “dominance agenda.”

The National Energy Dominance Council primarily cites national security interests:

https://www.eenews.net/articles/white-house-launches-energy-...

It works towards increasing US energy production at all costs even though the US is already a net exporter.

What is not mentioned of course is that increased US dependencies of countries like Japan are a feature:

https://energytracker.asia/japan-to-buy-record-amounts-of-ln...

That model, extort US investments and let Japan build US infrastructure in return for LNG was from 2025.

Now, with the Iran conflict, Qatar is shut off and Japan can be pressured even more.

Re: US Consumer Price Index up 4.2%

#143

Post by thewebguyd »

kennywinker wrote: post #121
ZeWaka wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you assuming yearly wages not increasing to match/exceed inflation every year? The logical point here doesn't make much sense to me otherwise.

Cumulative inflation since 2019 has been 30%. More with these new numbers, I think. What jobs have the wages gone up 30% in that same time period? I’m sure a few, but not many.

I'd say almost no one gets a 30%+ increase staying in the same company. There was a short period between 2019 and ~2022 when tech was hiring like crazy and you could just hop from job to job for huge increases every 6 months to a year.

The problem is that is now over, and so wages are back to being suppressed again.

Re: US Consumer Price Index up 4.2%

#144

Post by dmoy »

breakpointalpha wrote: post #127
dw_arthur wrote: post #93

Paradoxically, inflation has contributed to me taking a sabbatical. While I live in a LCOL area and made ~140k/year it just no longer felt worth it to work as I saw my retirement accounts start to match and exceed my salary in yearly gains. I do plan on going back to work in a part time manner, but inflation has killed any reason for me to work hard at a job for that level of salary. Furthermore, the feeling of "what…

I don't understand this point of view. $140k in a LCOL is a fantastic salary. Median US household income is $83k/yr. It feels more likely your investment account gains are driving your decisions. Stock gains are also driven by inflation though! I can sort of understand the feeling though, I just recently got a 2.5% raise for "inflation", which hardly feels like it's making a dent.

I don't think that OP meant to say their wage income was low.

I think OP means that once their investment returns starts exceeding their wage income, their motivation for continuing to work drops.

Which, I kinda get. If you don't really like what you're doing, it's harder to stay motivated at continuing to work when your bag of money makes more money than you do.

It sounds like OP is already planning on some amount of return to work, which may be necessary because that exact point (investment returns > wage income) isn't necessarily a safe point to retire. But it might be, depending on how much you spend, and what your not-employer-funded healthcare costs are.

Re: US Consumer Price Index up 4.2%

#146

Post by horsawlarway »

kachnuv_ocasek wrote: post #98
hadlock wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

2% is good, anything over 3% is not good, anything over 4% is bad, 5% and higher is really bad. Hope that clears things up for you.

Why those arbitrary thresholds?

In complete seriousness:

An offhand remark made by New Zealand's Finance Minister, Roger Douglas, during a 1988 television interview.

Re: US Consumer Price Index up 4.2%

#148

Post by jakobnissen »

eatsyourtacos wrote: post #89
jakobnissen wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is the government measured inflation not the same as real inflation?

Because they basically pick and choose what's in there. If you sat down and did the math on what it costs someone to pay rent / mortgage, car insurance, health insurance, daycare, schooling, going out to eat and drink, doing anything for entertainment, go to the grocery store.. it's not a debate that the real inflation is significantly higher all the time than what is used to measure the number.

But that’s exactly what the inflation measures of the BLS is - someone doing the math on what all these things cost.

Re: US Consumer Price Index up 4.2%

#149

Post by ashgf1 »

loudmax wrote: post #86
23ahgfqa wrote: post #10

The Iran conflict will continue on a low flame (occasional pinpricks like now) forever. It serves the US Energy Dominance Agenda against China, Japan, India and the EU. The Trump administration does not care about "its" population. There were already rumors early in the Trump term that Trump would not mind a recession so that his real estate cronies could buy cheap foreclosures. So it is all a double win for the olig…

That is ascribing far too much strategic thinking to this administration. They're just not capable of the kind of planning and foresight that would require. The administration's planning is much more along the lines of, Will this look cool when they announce it on Fox News tomorrow? If you think there's much beyond that, you're ascribing strategic clarity where there isn't any. They're continue to flail around and TA…

I would not underestimate the figures in the background. Trump and Hegseth are clowns of course, but they don't make policies.

The energy dominance model was already floated by Trump in his first term. He was the most vocal critic of Nordstream long before the Ukraine war. Biden couldn't push so aggressively because of the green agenda but dutifully shut down Nordstream and made the EU dependent on US LNG.

Now with the oil barons in power, there are no green agenda limitations and the long term plan (which is 100% not from Trump himself) can accelerate.

Look how they already make the EU and Japan rearm with all these levers (they should rearm, but for the purposes of keeping waterways free from whomever blocks them ...).

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