Earlier quoted context omitted.
Don’t forget the obvious ‘finger on the scale’ influence from the administration too.
Why can't we just water down the gasoline? /s
That's what E15 is for.
US Consumer Price Index up 4.2%
61–70 of 316 posts
Re: US Consumer Price Index up 4.2%
#62Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 4.2% is what you need to stay even On average, nationally. Look up your state or metropolitan-area CPI. Or better yet, track your actual expenses and project forward.
True, but how inflation affects each person is different. This isn't a good measure, but it is the best we have, and usually close enough to the truth.
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Re: US Consumer Price Index up 4.2%
#63Earlier quoted context omitted.
Not quite. The value of the currency has declined by 33% since 1999. Prices are subject to the combination of the value of the currency and the value of the good. Food may be worth more than in the past, for example, so you cannot look at the value of the currency alone.
The value of the currency relative to an evolving bag of reference goods.
Value is always relative. Typically currency is what we use as the relative point of comparison, but obviously you cannot compare the value of the currency with the value of the currency. Hence why we flip things around. A bag of goods, as opposed to a single item, filters out the noise of each individual good changing in value independently.
Re: US Consumer Price Index up 4.2%
#64Remember this next time you get your yearly review/raise. 4.2% is what you need to stay even, anything less is a pay cut.
> 4.2% is what you need to stay even On average, nationally. Look up your state or metropolitan-area CPI. Or better yet, track your actual expenses and project forward.
A conversation with your boss about a COLA raise really shouldn't include your own personal finances. "I just bought a house" is not a good reason for a raise; "prices in our area have increased" is a much better one
Re: US Consumer Price Index up 4.2%
#65U.S. consumer wages index down -1% this past three months. also. We almost briefly started climbing positive in January, but nope, another 1% drop, sigh.
See also the +25% inflation / -1.2% net wages after inflation over five years chart here, for those unfamiliar with how inflation % press releases are misleading over time. If household spending power is -1% after +4% inflation, then that inflation probably isn’t healthy for your country’s economic future, etc.
https://www.statista.com/chart/32428/inflation-and-wage-grow...
(I also suspect the wage index itself is disguising about the total wages paid index dropping like a stone, but haven’t done the math to chart it yet myself yet.)
Re: US Consumer Price Index up 4.2%
#66Prices have doubled since 1999!? Restaurant prices near me have doubled since 2015, easily. And that's not counting delivery going from free to 25% of the meal cost.
Not quite. The value of the currency has declined by 33% since 1999. Prices are subject to the combination of the value of the currency and the value of the good. Food may be worth more than in the past, for example, so you cannot look at the value of the currency alone.
Food is one of the things that's going to have the least change in value.
Re: US Consumer Price Index up 4.2%
#67Earlier quoted context omitted.
If this ends up being the case, 15 years from now we might look back at this as the catalyst for supercharging the energy transition across the world ex-US.
Might be wishful thinking, but I see this as the silver lining of the conflict
> I see this as the silver lining of the conflict
From what I can tell it’s also supercharging coal, particularly in Asia, e.g. India investing in coal gasification infrastructure [1].
[1] https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/india-clears-4-billi...
Re: US Consumer Price Index up 4.2%
#68The 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.”
Re: US Consumer Price Index up 4.2%
#69Prices have doubled since 1999!? Restaurant prices near me have doubled since 2015, easily. And that's not counting delivery going from free to 25% of the meal cost.
It's CPI, they'll just keep changing the basket of goods until the numbers look like they want them to.
"Well, inflation since 2015 is nonexistent if you swap out steaks for 3 day old catfish and fruits for kool aid packets"
Re: US Consumer Price Index up 4.2%
#70Here are some N-year rolling total inflation charts to put this datapoint in a longer-term perspective: https://totalrealreturns.com/inflation . Zooming out always smooths the noise.
I am not sure what the perspective is: we aren't the same economy (there are true financial system differences between now and say, 1985) and, even if we were the same, the three other shocks that rise like this are two world wars and an oil crisis. This is some dunderding old narcissist thinking he's the toughest kid on the block. You could argue the oil crisis was a similar result of the US never, ever learning a l…
And yes I am oversimplifying: the current conditions are actually do to a number of stupid things the current administration did because they assumed everyone who came before them was stupid and woke, but this just strikes me wrong, as though the chart should be comfort to someone struggling to make rent or pay for medicine or what have you. Much of this could have been avoided.