Inflation Up
 

Up tick.

:oops:

Don’t need a government statistic to confirm that. A trip to the grocery store or the renewal notice for homeowners or health insurance makes it abundantly clear.

Rich People's inflation
 

per macro analyst this morning on Bloomberg, Dr. David Kelly, Chief Global Strategist for J.P. Morgan Asset Management.

Inflation is currently a rich person's problem, where the bulk of the inflation is in high end services

For the poors, gasoline is down, and shelter costs coming down.

People under 40 have never seen inflation like this. We have lived it a couple of times, always planned for it. This time is different because we are locked into the high level. Typically demand destruction reduces it. ...layoffs, recession etc.

I think the real "Killer" is housing costs and mortgage interest rates. My son who is 28 years old told me that his generation has given up on the American dream.

Historical inflation rates show otherwise. (2000, 2001, 2005, 2006, 2008, 2011...)

Interesting you say your son says that given the UHC discussion….he was 26 had it all and gave it all away.

Going to the Supermarket is painful. So what's causing this painful inflation? I just have to feed myself. I can only imagine how tough it is on families.

this 2020's inflation period was transitory, though a bit longer than the federal reserve had hoped, the inflation of the 70s was not transitory like this, but was more relentless because the cost of crude and derivatives usage was very, very inefficient as compared to today, and there was a much higher mfg demand for energy than today. .

So the 70's inflation is still the boogie man in many boomers memory and are still haunted to this day. . see the decade of dave's post above for confirmation

Housing costs do seem to have increased disproportionately. At the same time, both my nieces (30 and 28) recently purchased homes.

Guess the new Gulfstream or sport fishing boat is now off my bucket list

Not a true housing market when most of the sales are made by long term investors who buy with cash.

Its 2.7% year-over-year if I read the reports correctly. I can live with that. We definitely don't want deflation, and we don't want runaway inflation. 2.7% seems comfortable.

the books are being cooked

Big difference between then and now for savers is that back in the day you could buy a 10 year treasury bond yielding 15.75 percent to help offset the pain of inflation. When our country, and it’s general population, weren’t strapped with unsustainable debt, the federal reserve was actually able to take adequate measures to effectively combat inflation.

Egg prices are due mostly because laws were pasted that hens must be cage free. And bird flu that wiped out millions of hens. On top of that, feed prices went up. AMA for years, was promoting eggs as the enemy and not to eat them. All BS as eggs are high protein and no calories. So demand outweighs supply.

Haven't you heard, "this 2020's inflation period was transitory, though a bit longer than the federal reserve had hoped". So there is no inflation now, it was just transitory...

Gas is still fluctuating up and down week to week.

Food both groceries and restaurants still going up. Very understated

food can be very regionally affected. The CPI is for all USA, alaska, hawaii, and continental US. . . So it's a number which includes a very huge area with lots of variations through out the sampling.

hard products like this, the CPI is pretty good estimate. Within services, it's a dumpster fire of a sampling process. Owner's equivalent rent is the worst dumpster fire with health insurance next.

so what's your egg spending as a percentage of total spend??
versus insurance and taxes??

I know people have individual pain points and cherry pick examples to suit their own biases, but eggs? one carton lasts two weeks for us, = 24 max cartons per year, which = $100 +/- not significant. . breakfast or lunch at any non fast food joint is easily $20 per person, $25-30 if hungry with tip. . .

That's all labor inflation from increasing minimum wage to compete for labor and mandatory labor rates. .

not to be argumentative, and its not that these numbers are perfect, its that they are what the government and lots of decisions are made on. . government and private decisions using the best information possible. .

Gas buddy analyst, gas prices are the lowest in several years across the country. . .
yeah, stations play games with customers, inventory, expected increases, etc. but gas prices on an inflation adjusted basis, very, very , very cheap.

Most very poor don’t own vehicles so no need for gasoline.

Just cause crud oil goes up down like rollercoaster (do to futures stock trades) don’t mean other commodities will go down ever IMO, sure might drop few cents but NEVER drop enough to make differences.

For most people in TV, eggs are minor expense, since we're not the "typical family of 5"...

For those people, it's a significant cost...

Us...............maybe a dozen per month.
:shocked:

Transitory, what a load of BS. I hate terms that attempt to deceive people into believing a fictitious agenda. The inflation we are experiencing is permanent and significant. Real meaning, prices make a transitory shift from much lower to very expensive and permanent.

Is inflation still at the 5%/6%/7% level or has it come back down?

At what time in the past 40 years have overall prices decreased?

Inflation is going to continue, it might level off every now and then but before you know it, it creeps in again. Compare the income in the fifties when an employee was making a $100 a week and was making ends meet, today that person would be homeless. There are a number of factors that control inflation. Supply and demand, companies that become cooperations which have to satisfy their management and their investors which today is usually us, employee shortages. It's a balancing act, the population grows to fast it causes inflation, the population grow to slow it cause inflation. Though most of us want to pin this on one fall guy, it's truly a combination of factors.

For now, he will come back as his situation improves.

Looks like Congress needs to pass a sequel to the Inflation Reduction Act.

Inflation Reduction Act | U.S. Department of the Treasury

Not a sequel but an antidote.:smiley:

News items: Black Friday sales and Thanksgiving holiday travel set new record highs.

The 2020's inflation is NOT transitory. It's just that the rate of increase has lowered. Prices are still high and there has not been a reduction in prices just a reduction in the rate of increase.

They keep inflation going because it's a hidden tax and beneficial big banks. Inflation: The Hidden Tax

Oh, what I would have given for today's interest rates when we started out. We were under Reaganomics. My husband was a vet so we were able to get a VA loan. 1983. Interest rates were 16.5% and 6 points!

In which of the last 40 years was there a reduction of prices?

In a healthy, growing economy prices will increase. Economists may argue over how large that increase should be but Americans have been comfortable with something in the 1.5% - 2.5% range. The current 2.7% is slightly higher than that range but is nothing like the 5% we have seen at other times in the past.

It was the high inflation rates that were expected to be transitory not any inflation at all.

Honest numbers on inflation

Shadow Government Statistics - Home Page

Please justify "shelter costs coming down."
 

In your chart the only "shelter cost" that I saw was "Rent of primary residence." and it was up 4.4%. In addition "Electricity" was up 3.1%.

Price levels have nothing to do with inflation.
Inflation is all about the rate of change of price levels.

The rate of change of price change is nearly back to where it was, which is the definition of transitory. . the arguments around transitory center around how long did it take. . there is a bit of a bull whip effect by the pandemic which is smoothing out as we get farther away from the pandemic and closer back to "normal"

Inflation - Wikipedia

The common measure of inflation is the inflation rate, the annualized percentage change in a general price index.[9] As prices faced by households do not all increase at the same rate, the consumer price index (CPI) is often used for this purpose.

however, you really do not want total economy price deflation, that is very bad for the economy.
the goal is disinflation from a high rate to a stable growth rate.

The target rate of 2% by the federal reserve is a bit low in my opinion, due to the employee behavioral bias of acceptable merit increases. The optimal point is where labor rate inflation is higher than the product inflation rate, and the net addition of the two is around 3%. . Then the economy has positive GDP momentum.

apologies if you still disagree. . .

and the trend of past months has been higher.
electricity around the US is a regulated industry, I used to work in the industry. Regulatory demands have pushed up the infrastructure cost of local customer delivery. Be careful what you wish for. . all those fancy graphs and personalized electrical usage all come with an added cost, which never goes away

I loved BrianL's example of the owner of a custom home build who asked for all the change orders, and was shocked that it cost extra money. . . same effect with medical records and custom graphs, historical data trends, etc. . which never goes away

TV golf is doing their part to support inflation. If you play every championship course once next year it will cost you 5.28% more than this year based on winter rates.