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US annual inflation declines to 7.7% in October vs. 7.9% expected

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Re: US annual inflation declines to 7.7% in October vs. 7.9% expected

#181

Anyone notice that brand name soda (looking at you Coke) has increased almost 100% while the generic/house brand has had slight increases. I feel like Coke is testing the pricing limits of its customers especially with the smaller packaging and these prices will not come back down.

"Food at home" is up 12% year over year. Table A in the link is good reading.

Re: US annual inflation declines to 7.7% in October vs. 7.9% expected

#182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also it is worth mentioning that part of the major reason accounting for inflation is car price. It’s going down now as chip makers produce more and prices go down further.

Hopefully that helps with new car pricing. Dealers are still selling well above MSRP.

They are only selling well above MSRP because people are willing to buy well above MSRP

Re: US annual inflation declines to 7.7% in October vs. 7.9% expected

#183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There was no Anti-Inflation Act, there was a spending... SPENDING bill they claimed would lower inflation because it also included a very limited amount of deficit reduction which 1 week later they had spent like 3 times on new programs including the Student Loan Cancellation which reversed any inflation reduction the original bill could have had (which was nill in the first place)

How did student loan cancellation reverse inflation reduction when it's on hold due to legal challenges? No one has received a penny.

I haven’t been paying anything since non-penalized forbearance started. Why pay when interest is 0% and there’s no penalty for not paying?

I’ve been using money that normally goes to loans for other bills. I imagine plenty of other people are buying more stuff with the money so i imagine it does contribute to inflation

Re: US annual inflation declines to 7.7% in October vs. 7.9% expected

#184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah....and the inflation we're seeing elsewhere in the world is just a coincidence.

EU had negative interest rates for a decade. Low interest rates during the good times is definitely a mistake You end up paying for eventually

That’s the thing that makes me question the whole Keynesian/ interest rate setting problem, you cannot know if you are living in good times are bad times. That requires knowledge of the future.

Let’s say all of this is due to the war in Russia, or in some alternate reality China carpet bombs Taiwan, if you thought you were living in bad times before the event you are in for a rude awakening. It’s the same as black swans and cannot really work over time.

Re: US annual inflation declines to 7.7% in October vs. 7.9% expected

#185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is skewing if you are looking for an up to date change. It's like, is it better to get two points on a curved line and draw a straight line through them, or is it better to calculate the derivative and the the slope at a specific point?

That depends on how noisy or smooth the changes are. That's why it's valuable to look at both.

It may be - but to the above poster's point - if gas went up 20% in Jan of this year and then stays flat... is it helpful to think of prices as "going up" ? It seems misleading.

Re: US annual inflation declines to 7.7% in October vs. 7.9% expected

#186

Anyone notice that brand name soda (looking at you Coke) has increased almost 100% while the generic/house brand has had slight increases. I feel like Coke is testing the pricing limits of its customers especially with the smaller packaging and these prices will not come back down.

Then buy generic. This is one way to fight inflation. Coke will get the message very quickly if their sales start coming down.

I don't drink this kind of beverage, but from what I see in restauration, you don't really have a choice. Most fast-food and restaurant will have the "known" brand and no generic brand, so they will move the cost onto their customer.

Re: US annual inflation declines to 7.7% in October vs. 7.9% expected

#187

Anyone notice that brand name soda (looking at you Coke) has increased almost 100% while the generic/house brand has had slight increases. I feel like Coke is testing the pricing limits of its customers especially with the smaller packaging and these prices will not come back down.

If you check Coke's financial statements, you'll see that although revenue has risen quickly, cost of revenue has risen about as fast, leading to relatively unchanged gross profit margins (36% so far in 2022, compared with 40%+ in every year from 1985-2014 and between 33%-39% from 2015 to 2021). Word from industry press is that the rising price of aluminum has been a major driver of the increased costs. I don't know…

Store brands have very little advertising costs, for one.

Coke spent $4B on advertising in 2021 [0], which is about a quarter of their costs. [1]

[0] - https://statstic.com/coca-cola-advertising-costs/

[1] - https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/KO/cocacola/cost-g...

Re: US annual inflation declines to 7.7% in October vs. 7.9% expected

#189

Anyone notice that brand name soda (looking at you Coke) has increased almost 100% while the generic/house brand has had slight increases. I feel like Coke is testing the pricing limits of its customers especially with the smaller packaging and these prices will not come back down.

Of course they are. There was a much-watched video that went around a few weeks ago that composed quite a few CEOs talking about pushing the pricing envelope to take advantage of inflation news (effectively saying: "People now expect price increases, we can leverage that to our gain!"). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=psYyiu9j1VI

There's not really much we can do about this. Artificial price ceilings were tried in Venezuela and it only contributed significantly to their massive food shortages they experienced.

Most notably it resulted in a big reduction in the variety of food available because while some of the biggest companies could survive with the new lower prices (and work with the gov directly to set those prices) the bulk of small/medium sized ones couldn't, often as other expenses eventually increased while prices didn't.

Re: US annual inflation declines to 7.7% in October vs. 7.9% expected

#190
post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> No one has received a penny. The Biden administration mailed student loan checks to people (conveniently set up to arrive just before the most recent midterm): https://www.foxbusiness.com/personal-finance/student-loan-re... The checks are "rebates" for people who paid their student loans during the moratorium. The idea is to reimburse those people and add back their student loan debt so they can claim the maximum $…

That's not the student loan cancellation program. Those are people who overpaid during the pause in payments. It's as inflationary as getting a tax refund in April.

> That's not the student loan cancellation program.

It’s directly related to the student loan cancellation program as it’s intended to maximize the amount of cancellation for people who paid during the moratorium.

> Those are people who overpaid during the pause in payments. It's as inflationary as getting a tax refund in April.

It’s not overpayment. It’s just payment because it’s money those people owed on their loans. A payment pause doesn’t mean the money is not owed, it’s simply delayed.

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