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Consumer prices increase 2.6 percent

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Re: Consumer prices increase 2.6 percent

#181

Post by ping_pong »

bradlys wrote: post #175
ping_pong wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But by that measure, everything is up or down because of the pandemic. A lot of the inflation we are seeing is because of supply chain issues specifically caused by the pandemic. For example, lumber is only because they closed down mills, and chips are short because companies cancelled a ton of orders, etc. I myself went on a trip because plane tickets are so damn cheap right now. But I do agree that we are in a peri…

For anyone else out there thinking of traveling, the flights are cheap until you start having to do all the associated covid testing to even enter other countries. After that, it’s actually a very expensive time to fly. (Especially if the location only allows certain test facilities - $400+ per test adds up) Tests to get on the plane, tests after you land, tests some days after you land, tests before you leave... The…

I went to Hawaii recently. We got first class tickets for around $600. A single test for $150 was required to go to Hawaii, but no test was required after that. And we didn't need to test before returning back to California.

The most expensive part actualy is car rentals. Car rentals in Maui are insanely expensive, if you can even get a rental. One of my friends was quoted $900/day. In other islands like Big Island and Oahu, they are cheaper ($50-80/day) if you can find a deal.

Re: Consumer prices increase 2.6 percent

#182

Post by namdnay »

ragnese wrote: post #107
MontyCarloHall wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed. A 2021 Accord is far superior to a 1990 Rolls Royce or other ultraluxury car in terms of amenities, engine power, quietness, build quality, etc. That’s not even mentioning the leaps and bounds in efficiency and safety. I’d argue cars have gotten effectively cheaper over the years, as they’ve dramatically improved in every respect. If you could still buy a 1990 Accord manufactured today, it would probably sell…

Tangentially, wouldn't it be nice if we could buy a 1990-quality car for the inflation-adjusted price? Poor(ish) people would have a decent shot at actually affording reliable transportation and climbing up the ladder.

Dacia are doing exactly that in Europe. Simple cheap cars made from 10-20 year old Renault parts. Pretty reliable (because by the time they trickle down to Dacia, every component has been tested for several years by millions of Renault drivers) and insanely cheap

Re: Consumer prices increase 2.6 percent

#183

Post by namdnay »

nly wrote: post #80
zaptheimpaler wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://www.epsilontheory.com/im-trying-to-understand-hedoni... "A Honda Accord cost $12,000 in 1990 and it costs $25,000 now. A Mustang was $9,000 and now it’s $27,000. The BLS has new car prices close to unchanged over the past 30 years." Whatever you think of the validity of "hedonic adjustments", this is certainly not what I would expect when BLS reports car prices as unchanged during that period.

Cars, like homes, live in a debt market. I can't speak for the US but here in the UK more than 90% of new, private car registrations are supported by purchases made on finance[0]. High car and house prices are what you get when you have unprecedented close-to-zero interest rates for this long. Prices = f(interest rates, affordability) [0] https://www.fla.org.uk/media/facts-and-figures/

> I can't speak for the US but here in the UK more than 90% of new, private car registrations are supported by purchases made on finance

I would be wary of this statistic, because it could just mean that only people with leasing plans are buying new cars, and everyone else is buying the cars coming out of lease (which makes sense financially, a car loses something like 30% of its value in the first two years?)

Re: Consumer prices increase 2.6 percent

#184

Post by dlubarov »

drewcon wrote: post #109
henriquez wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Fed and U.S. government are rigging our economic system to backdoor tax the middle class while gaslighting all of us into thinking that this is normal. You don’t print $10T and handwave away millennia of basic economic principles. Help me understand how CPI is not a joke with respect to how it’s used to say “this is normal.” Everything I’m interested in spending money on, new hires for my company, real estate, ca…

But no one is “selling” you anything here. CPI is just data with a very public methodology. Some things go up, others go down. The Fed uses it as one input in decision making to manage inflation over long time horizons. You can look at what is measured in CPI and how it’s measured. You can have a conversation about whether that’s the most precise way to measure inflation etc. but just waving your hands about your “li…

> What is the motive [...] What’s in it for them?

There's a huge monetary incentive, since things like social security payments (the largest item in the federal budget) are inflation indexed. The Boskin Report [1], which argued that inflation was overstated by 1.1%, estimated that their proposed "corrections" would reduce the deficit by $202 billion by 2008.

The whole thing was rather suspicious in my opinion. The report was based on some questionable interpretations of inflation, and it seemed like the Senate appointed particular members in order to get the outcome they wanted, as Thomas Palley argued [2]:

> The commission is itself a delicious example of such bias: All its members were on record prior to the establishment of the commission as believing the CPI to be overstated. At the same time, the commission took no evidence from such well-known economists as Janet Norwood, a former head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, and Dean Baker, of the Economic Policy Institute, who believe that the CPI provides a reasonable reading of inflation. In effect, the commission took account of all the evidence of overstatement of inflation by the CPI and downplayed the evidence of potential understatement.

[1] https://www.ssa.gov/history/reports/boskinrpt.html

[2] https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1997/04/how-to-...

Re: Consumer prices increase 2.6 percent

#185

Post by piva00 »

thepasswordis wrote: post #92

In other news, the chocolate ration has been increased to 25 grams! Great success! /s Anybody living in the world can tell you that consumer prices are up a lot, lot more than 2.6%. Look even at this very thread. Food prices are way up, lumber prices are way up, restaurant prices are way up, clothing costs are up. Lots of goods literally just seem unbuyable at this point. Even in my city (nowhere near the southeast)…

> people are now lining up to buy gas

Isn't this due to the pipeline cyberattack though? Completely unrelated to the other points I believe.

Re: Consumer prices increase 2.6 percent

#186

Post by ameetgaitonde »

simonblack wrote: post #159

The problem with printing money by governments is that every dollar printed means the value of that money is spread thinner and thinner. That means you need more of those thinner dollars to make up the value. It's like watering down the beer. You'll need to drink more glasses of that weaker beer to get the same effect. Every government gets away with printing money for a very short time, then the Zimbabwe Effect take…

The key similarity in all those situations was a loss of productive capacity.

The Confederate currency wasn't backed by any assets, so it lost value as their defeat became more likely. Apparently, it lost 20% of it's value after the battle of Gettysburg.

Zimbabwe's government seized the land of white farmers and gave them to people who lacked farming knowledge and experience. Predictably, their output cratered, sparking the hyperinflationary spiral.

Germany lost a huge amount of it's productive capabilities due to the Treaty of Versailles. Keynes wrote a fantastic book (The Economic Consequences of Peace) that lays the economic case for why the Treaty would be a disaster. Germany basically had much of its land, equipment, and other assets seized while also being saddled with significant war debts. They were effectively forced into hyperinflation by the structure of the treaty.

Re: Consumer prices increase 2.6 percent

#187

Post by chrischen »

jrsj wrote: post #145
chrischen wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or maybe everyone who has been having this experience is posting about it, because otherwise there's nothing to post about.

This is an obvious and simple explanation yes but I think it’s only part of the story. CPI numbers are brought down by considering a lot of non-essential goods while almost everything you actually need — food, shelter, healthcare in particular has gotten considerably more expensive. So the sentiment is exacerbated by the fact that nobody really cares whether TVs etc are getting cheaper in their day to day lives.

Given that there's been a massive shift in allocation of spending due to the pandemic I would take any claims like this with a now expensive grain of salt. Let's not forget at the start of the pandemic toilet paper was going for $1 a roll.

Re: Consumer prices increase 2.6 percent

#188

Post by gruez »

RachelF wrote: post #171
gruez wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And that's fine right? 13 years ago an enthusiast-class graphics card went for $300[1]. Now it costs $650[2] (more if you include scalpers). Does that mean PC gaming hardware has inflated by 2x? [1] https://www.anandtech.com/show/2556 [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radeon_RX_6000_series

No, that's the opposite of how they work. They will say your 13 year old HD 4750 costs next to nothing these days. They compare like specs now with those last year, so technological progress is counted as deflation.

>They will say your 13 year old HD 4750 costs next to nothing these days

Maybe it does? From a GFLOPS/s point of view it's outperformed by the integrated graphics in your CPU (eg. https://en.wikichip.org/wiki/intel/uhd_graphics/630), which essentially costs nothing.

Re: Consumer prices increase 2.6 percent

#189

Post by gruez »

deadbolt wrote: post #167
gruez wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>quality car Ironic considering that the reason cars have gotten more expensive was because their quality increased. >quality house They've gotten bigger over the decades, better equipped, and the monthly payments have actually gone down https://awealthofcommonsense.com/2021/03/what-if-housing-pri...

I won't disagree with you that cars have increased in quality, but I don't believe homes have. Bigger isn't better. Better equipped? Sure, maybe. When I look at the new homes under construction today (or over the past few decades), they're shit. They have more floor space, and that's about all.

>When I look at the new homes under construction today (or over the past few decades), they're shit.

Can you elaborate on this? How are they "shit"? Bad build quality? Tacky design?

Re: Consumer prices increase 2.6 percent

#190

Post by dang »

pie420 wrote: post #147
JohnJamesRambo wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well the prices I see around me are up a lot more than 2.6%. My latest sticker shock was at Lowe's.- https://imgur.com/a/9UoXNdk

People pretend like HN is full of smart people, but then you still have entire threads of "I DONT CARE ABOUT DATA JUST LOOK AT MY ANECDOTES"

"Please don't sneer, including at the rest of the community."

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

HN threads are conversations. Anecdotes are the life blood of conversation. This is just people being human, as they should be.

https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...

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