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A $100k Prize for a Decentralized Inflation Dashboard

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Re: A $100k Prize for a Decentralized Inflation Dashboard

#81

Post by acover »

gruez wrote: post #72
acover wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, I agree it’s not as useful if you trust government sources. I’m not that familiar with USA inflation but with Canadian inflation statistics, certain categories feel way off - such as housing. As someone who is considering buying a house their measure is useless. BLS numbers are also controversial - https://www.investopedia.com/articles/07/consumerpriceindex....

>certain categories feel way off - such as housing. As someone who is considering buying a house their measure is useless. Because it's based off "owners equivalent rent", not the sticker price of a house. The latter is somewhat problematic because a house is an investment, not an expenditure (unlike an apple or a doctor visit).

> Its purpose is to determine changes in the cost of using a stock of dwellings.

https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/pub/62f0014m/62f0014m2017001...

This is difficult for me to understand as there is no market price for what they are trying to estimate. They have a thousand knobs to guess at. It reads a bit like they are grouping people who’ve own their home for 50 years in with those who just bought - similar to how they calculate rent.

For example, they weight mortgage interest at less than utilities. For a new homeowner, mortgage interest is probably 5-10x utilities.

Regardless, they explicitly ignore the experience of a first time home buyer, who are pretty trapped into renting. A house is not just an investment, it’s a different experience owning versus renting.

Re: A $100k Prize for a Decentralized Inflation Dashboard

#82

Post by missedthecue »

trts wrote: post #77
Geee wrote: post #63

Real inflation is very hard to measure, because it's not only prices that change - more often the product loses quality while price stays the same. Either way, you are getting less for what you pay for, but only the price change is measured as inflation. In addition, people switch over to cheaper alternatives when products get more expensive - meat is replaced with vegetables for example. This changes the average bas…

Many things have also gained in quality substantially, such as vehicles, electronics, and durable goods. A new car not only lasts longer and requires less maintenance, is more fuel efficient, safer, but is often loaded with amenities like navigation, entertainment, self-driving. How do you make an equivalency to something from the 90s? Meanwhile digital content and communication services have become free and ubiquito…

The music point is very true. Used to be that a CD had 10 songs on it and sold for between ten and twenty dollars. Now for $10 a month for Spotify or YouTube music you can stream literally thousands of songs a month.

Another one is mobile phone service. Does any remember pay-per-text plans? My phone bill has been more or less than same for a decade, but I now have unlimited call, text, and data.

Re: A $100k Prize for a Decentralized Inflation Dashboard

#83

Post by wrs »

anythingdude321 wrote: post #41
wrs wrote: post #2

OK, blockchain fans, I’m genuinely confused as usual… Can someone explain what the point is of collecting price data and then putting it on the chain with a smart contract to do calculations on it? If “censorship” is a problem, why not just broadcast/mirror the signed data? If the calculation is untrusted, why not just publish the source code and let people run it on the published data? What is the blockchain accompl…

Including the computation and data on-chain enables other parties to use it trustlessly and verifiably. If you, for example, wanted to make an algorithmic central bank that reacted to inflation numbers you would need on-chain CPI in order to do that. Similarly you may want to index your interest rate to the CPI in some way (like LIBOR). It becomes a lot more useful when on-chain than in a central database

It’s not trustless, because you’re trusting the scraping NGO to put the correct price data on the chain. You can verify that it came from the NGO with a simple signature; you don’t need the chain for that.

Re: A $100k Prize for a Decentralized Inflation Dashboard

#84

Post by gruez »

acover wrote: post #81
gruez wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>certain categories feel way off - such as housing. As someone who is considering buying a house their measure is useless. Because it's based off "owners equivalent rent", not the sticker price of a house. The latter is somewhat problematic because a house is an investment, not an expenditure (unlike an apple or a doctor visit).

> Its purpose is to determine changes in the cost of using a stock of dwellings. https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/pub/62f0014m/62f0014m2017001... This is difficult for me to understand as there is no market price for what they are trying to estimate. They have a thousand knobs to guess at. It reads a bit like they are grouping people who’ve own their home for 50 years in with those who just bought - similar to how the…

>It reads a bit like they are grouping people who’ve own their home for 50 years in with those who just bought - similar to how they calculate rent.

>[...] For a new homeowner, mortgage interest is probably 5-10x utilities.

Sounds like you're upset that the index is an average of everyone, and therefore doesn't recognize your individual struggles?

>A house is not just an investment, it’s a different experience owning versus renting.

Eating food grown yourself is a different experience than shopping at the supermarket. Should we factor farm land cost into the CPI?

Re: A $100k Prize for a Decentralized Inflation Dashboard

#85

Post by didntknowya »

Geee wrote: post #63

Real inflation is very hard to measure, because it's not only prices that change - more often the product loses quality while price stays the same. Either way, you are getting less for what you pay for, but only the price change is measured as inflation. In addition, people switch over to cheaper alternatives when products get more expensive - meat is replaced with vegetables for example. This changes the average bas…

yes I've seen a lot of groceries item stay the same price but in smaller packaging

Re: A $100k Prize for a Decentralized Inflation Dashboard

#86

Post by greenburger »

didntknowya wrote: post #85
Geee wrote: post #63

Real inflation is very hard to measure, because it's not only prices that change - more often the product loses quality while price stays the same. Either way, you are getting less for what you pay for, but only the price change is measured as inflation. In addition, people switch over to cheaper alternatives when products get more expensive - meat is replaced with vegetables for example. This changes the average bas…

yes I've seen a lot of groceries item stay the same price but in smaller packaging

NPR recently covered [0] this phenomena which is also know as 'shrinkflation'

[0] https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2021/07/06/1012409112/bew...

Re: A $100k Prize for a Decentralized Inflation Dashboard

#87

Post by acover »

gruez wrote: post #84
acover wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Its purpose is to determine changes in the cost of using a stock of dwellings. https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/pub/62f0014m/62f0014m2017001... This is difficult for me to understand as there is no market price for what they are trying to estimate. They have a thousand knobs to guess at. It reads a bit like they are grouping people who’ve own their home for 50 years in with those who just bought - similar to how the…

>It reads a bit like they are grouping people who’ve own their home for 50 years in with those who just bought - similar to how they calculate rent. >[...] For a new homeowner, mortgage interest is probably 5-10x utilities. Sounds like you're upset that the index is an average of everyone, and therefore doesn't recognize your individual struggles? >A house is not just an investment, it’s a different experience owning…

When measuring the price index of natural gas should you average in contracts written 50 years ago but still active, regardless of whether that price is currently available on the market?

> Eating food grown yourself is a different experience than shopping at the supermarket. Should we factor farm land cost into the CPI?

If 70% of the population paid for a "gardening experience" like they do for gym memberships, etc then yeah I would expect that to be in CPI.

Re: A $100k Prize for a Decentralized Inflation Dashboard

#88

Post by lottin »

nuclearnice1 wrote: post #65
lottin wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These are people who think the government wants to censor their prices database... so not exactly geniuses.

Take a look at Argentina 2007-2016 [1,2,3] [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/MIT_Billion_Prices_project [2] https://www.hbs.edu/faculty/Pages/item.aspx?num=54491 [3] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cristina_Fernández_de_Kirchn...

What happened in Argentina 2007-2016 that would suggest censorship-resistance in a prices database is a feature that makes sense?

Re: A $100k Prize for a Decentralized Inflation Dashboard

#89

Post by perl4ever »

vasilipupkin wrote: post #5

not a bad idea, but the way to do it is probably to come up with a certain basket and then actually have people physically go into stores and record prices in those stores and then reward them with a crypto token for contributing ( kinda like the mystery shopper industry ).

>but the way to do it is probably to come up with a certain basket

I don't get it. Tell them what to buy? The official figures are based on a basket determined by surveying people. That is the point. It sounds like you are saying the problem with the government CPI is that it's not predetermined?

"The Quarterly Interview Survey is designed to collect data on large and recurring expenditures that consumers can be expected to recall for a period of 3 months or longer, such as rent and utilities, and the Diary Survey is designed to collect data on small, frequently purchased items, including most food and clothing. Together, the data from the two surveys cover the complete range of consumers’ expenditures."

See https://www.bls.gov/cex/

Re: A $100k Prize for a Decentralized Inflation Dashboard

#90

Post by perl4ever »

acover wrote: post #62
gruez wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The issue is the generic basket of goods isn’t relevant for all people. but the BLS puts out figures for each category? https://www.bls.gov/news.release/cpi.t02.htm

Yes, I agree it’s not as useful if you trust government sources. I’m not that familiar with USA inflation but with Canadian inflation statistics, certain categories feel way off - such as housing. As someone who is considering buying a house their measure is useless. BLS numbers are also controversial - https://www.investopedia.com/articles/07/consumerpriceindex....

>certain categories feel way off

If you live in Vancouver, it's easy to forget 93% of the country doesn't.

From 1995 to just pre-pandemic, my home (in the US, far away from California) appreciated significantly less than inflation.

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