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It’s mostly a demand shock, not a supply shock, and it’s everywhere

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Re: It’s mostly a demand shock, not a supply shock, and it’s everywhere

#401

Post by adrianN »

relaxing wrote: post #387
throwtheacctawy wrote: post #358

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I live in Michigan. I have a 5.9kwh solar array. Spring/fall, I can produce over 40kwh/day. Summer heat lowers my production to upper 30-40kwh. January 2021, I produced 197kwh the entire month. I know this discussion is focused on heating. But from an electric vehicle perspective; 197kwh is not that much. In the winter, I don't think it would be enough electricity for a homes electric needs + EV or electric heat. I c…

Can you not get out there with a long handled broom and knock the snow off? Serious question, I’m debating a similar setup for myself.

There are roof rakes that you use for getting the snow off of roofs. I assume they also remove snow from solar panels.

Re: It’s mostly a demand shock, not a supply shock, and it’s everywhere

#402

Post by adrianN »

throwtheacctawy wrote: post #358
wexler88 wrote: post #345

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Solar is an excellent replacement for home heating oil during the Michigan winters. The vast majority of people in Michigan are already connected to an extremely efficient distribution network for electricity. The marginal cost of delivering additional energy through this network does not round to zero, it is zero. Meanwhile heating oil is delivered by trucks with a large cost in depreciation, labor, and fuel (furthe…

I live in Michigan. I have a 5.9kwh solar array. Spring/fall, I can produce over 40kwh/day. Summer heat lowers my production to upper 30-40kwh. January 2021, I produced 197kwh the entire month. I know this discussion is focused on heating. But from an electric vehicle perspective; 197kwh is not that much. In the winter, I don't think it would be enough electricity for a homes electric needs + EV or electric heat. I c…

It's not that hard to store solar power as Hydrogen and turn that back into electricity. The end-to-end efficiency is not as good as for batteries, but building something that can hold Hydrogen for a few months is cheaper than building the equivalent amount of batteries.

Re: It’s mostly a demand shock, not a supply shock, and it’s everywhere

#403

Post by ODILON_SATER »

Bud wrote: post #249
ODILON_SATER wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Claudia Sahm? Krugman? I rather listen to the hedge fund guys, at least they have skin in the game, don't they? Claudia Sahm is extremely partisan, and so is Krugman. You know it's going to be bad when we are starting to hear from the media that inflation is actually a good thing --because people have more disposable income to spend on things. First, it was just a blip, then they told us it would go away in half a ye…

Before attacking Krugman (who has a Nobel Prize in this subject, btw) and dismissing him out of hand in favor of random hedge fund guys, please cite evidence, any evidence, that his supposed "partisan" attributes have affected his work or made it less reliable or accurate. From where I sit, Krugman has been right a lot more often than the competition over the last few decades.

Krugman does not have a nobel prize in the subject. Krugman's nobel prize is in another area in Economics, not monetary policy. His contributions are mainly in trade, which were very important no doubt. But it doesn't make him an expert on monetary policy and inflation. I understand that Economics may look like a single-blob to outsiders, but Economics has a wide range of topics and sometimes they barely intersect.

Re: It’s mostly a demand shock, not a supply shock, and it’s everywhere

#404

Post by ajsnigrutin »

mmarq wrote: post #378
throaway46546 wrote: post #299

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Some lockdown policies directly affect your 'need for stuff' I think this was the root cause of the toilet paper shortage. People who normally spend a large portion of the day at the office were now spending that time at home. There was a popular viral video at the time of a man driving around on a forklift in a warehouse full of toilet paper laughing about the shortage, but it was all commercial toilet paper not wh…

The causes of the lockdown shortages are cultural, toilet paper disappeared in Northern European and English speaking countries, while in Italy (and I think in some places in Spain) yeast could not be found.

yeast was hone in slovenia too...

People were afraid they won't be able to buy bread, so they bought flour and yeast... then bought bread, and eventually threw away the yeast.

Re: It’s mostly a demand shock, not a supply shock, and it’s everywhere

#405

Post by ODILON_SATER »

PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #174
ODILON_SATER wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Claudia Sahm? Krugman? I rather listen to the hedge fund guys, at least they have skin in the game, don't they? Claudia Sahm is extremely partisan, and so is Krugman. You know it's going to be bad when we are starting to hear from the media that inflation is actually a good thing --because people have more disposable income to spend on things. First, it was just a blip, then they told us it would go away in half a ye…

> Claudia Sahm? Krugman? I rather listen to the hedge fund guys, at least they have skin in the game, don't they? Claudia Sahm is extremely partisan, and so is Krugman. "Hedge funds guy" are extremely partisan, in that they will fight hard to prevent any kind of legislative or other systemic change that would threaten their rent-seeking. They invariably favor the status quo and/or anything that increases their abilit…

You are correct.

To be honest, I am not a huge fan of hedge funds either. But in this specific case, I'd rather take their advice. In my opinion, for this specific case --discussing inflation trends--, I don't see a lot of room for hedge funds to be partisan? No new legislation, no wrinkles in the system, etc. And they may be wrong, and Krugman may be right after all. Economics, especially Macroeconomics forecasting analysis, should be treated with some reservation. I just find the particular post quite convincing given what I've observed in the last few months.

Re: It’s mostly a demand shock, not a supply shock, and it’s everywhere

#406

Post by wing-_-nuts »

EEMac wrote: post #167
asdff wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

5 year SPY chart is hillarious. Covid was seemingly a blip only a tad bigger than the blip in december 2018, we've been right back into the bull market trend for like a year now. The positive slope from march 20 2020 alone to today has just been insane, just a straight line up with hardly any deviation. So amazingly bullish. Fear doesn't exist in the markets anymore, we've seemed to have abandoned it. Just buy your l…

The 1920s have something to say about markets that climb without reference to underlying production.

My good man, stock prices have reached a permanently high plateau!

Re: It’s mostly a demand shock, not a supply shock, and it’s everywhere

#407

Post by dang »

wexler88 wrote: post #352
sleepysysadmin wrote: post #348

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Maybe everyone can afford a jet ski all of a sudden? No, the stims didn’t really do /that/ kind of wealth expansion. US money supply M0 in late 2019 was low around 3.5 trillion. Today it's around 6.4 trillion. This doesn't equate to 100% inflation, but it certainly equates to affording jet skis. M2 money supply is sitting around 21 trillion and ought to be more around 16 trillion. This is the equivalent to 31% locke…

This is not how money works.

Please don't post shallow dismissals to HN. We're trying for a different quality of discussion here, to the extent possible. If you wouldn't mind reviewing the rules and sticking to the intended spirit, we'd appreciate it. They're here: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.

If you know more than someone else, it would be great to share some of what you know so the rest of us can learn. If you don't want to do that, that's fine, but then it's usually best not to post. Putting others down or putting their comments down just makes the thread worse.

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

Edit: ditto for https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29161503.

Re: It’s mostly a demand shock, not a supply shock, and it’s everywhere

#408

Post by R0b0t1 »

zhdc1 wrote: post #276
arthur5005 wrote: post #68

What this doesn’t really address is the why? Yeah there’s more money floating around, so perhaps more people want to spend it, but why? Most people aren’t getting materially more stuff or even need that much more stuff, consumption’s already god damn conspicuous. Maybe everyone can afford a jet ski all of a sudden? No, the stims didn’t really do /that/ kind of wealth expansion. To me, this still looks like the bullwh…

> What this doesn’t really address is the why? Consumers base purchasing decisions on their monthly outlays. When interest rates go down, they can afford more in payments, so they increase their consumption until their expenses match what they can afford. A good example here is housing. The US and many EU states provided an under-appreciated amount of stimulus during the COVID-19 lockdowns. Even when this wasn't give…

> Even when this wasn't given directly to citizens, as it was in the US, it still trickled down from businesses to labor through steady wages.

Yeah, no. A lot of it just went into stock buybacks and other navel gazing.

Re: It’s mostly a demand shock, not a supply shock, and it’s everywhere

#409

Post by unpolloloco »

grayfaced wrote: post #206
KittenInABox wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't that why the US government has longstanding agricultural subsidies, guarantees on prices, etc.? Do we really have a shortage of food?

That's the stated purpose. But it has no teeth. Last year we saw aisles empty of meat and lots of news about meat shortages. But during that time domestic pork supplies were down 40% in the same period that pork exports to China quadrupled. Those subsidies failed in their stated purpose of resiliency. During the bad times, all that mattered is where more profit could be found.

I'd claim those subsidies worked fine then. The problem wasn't supply - It was delivery. There weren't enough drivers to move stuff around, so stuff didn't get moved around and shelves were empty. The supply chain's weakest link was delivery, so that broke. Exports to China used different infrastructure that wasn't as affected, so they still happened

Re: It’s mostly a demand shock, not a supply shock, and it’s everywhere

#410

Post by samarthr1 »

wiz21c wrote: post #366
e-master wrote: post #314

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My experience supports that - on public transit alone our family saved more than 5k USD last year, it would’ve more than made up for any equipment I would’ve had to buy (turned out though that I already had everything needed to work from home).

because of remote work, I have to heat the house 7 days per week, instead of about 0.25*5+2=3.25 => that's about twice as much. Given the rise in energy cost, this will have a huge impact.

At the same time that is largely a problem of the colder areas. In more sane (temperature wise) places, that energy cost is negligible.

Also, that assumes you are the only one (or the other person (s) in the house have very similar schedules) in the house. An assumption which if you have a house wife and a few kids, is largely invalid

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