KaiserJeep wrote:Fair enough. But I want to make one thing clear. If you have an income that is not growing AT LEAST 10% PER YEAR, you are losing ground, and experiencing reduced purchasing power. That average 10% annual inflation compounds rapidly. The charts above are in constant 2013 dollars, and are among the few that account for inflation. The huge numbers of people on government so-called "entitlements" are facing desperate circumstances as these simply do not increase due to the COLA (cost of living adjustment) which is based on the CPI (consumer price index), a deliberatly inadequate measure of inflation that excludes food and energy costs.
Now that (by the prevailing opinion here) the oil peak is in the recent past, we are looking at energy costs that will steadily increase along with increases in food and actually anything transported with fuels. Things are going to be worsening and these trends are long term.
I don't get it.
First, I still don't see any citation from you for your claim of 10% inflation annually in the US.
What charts above are you talking about? (Increases in family wealth are NOT an inflation measure. They're measuring things like wage increases, investment increases, etc, if those are the charts you mean.)
The CPI doesn't count food and energy because those are highly volatile and it is trying to show a relatively smooth and comprehensible measure of inflation. It doesn't count them when they're dragging the rate of inflation down either.
Higher oil prices MAY well continue to materialize over time. If they do, then to the extent that they accelerate inflation, then FUTURE inflation via the CPI will show the higher numbers. However, as we've seen on this site, predicting future oil prices over time with any accuracy is a very difficult thing to do.
It's been since the 70's that inflation has been even close to 10% overall for a decade.
https://www.minneapolisfed.org/communit ... rates-1913
Again, are you getting your 10% estimate from Shadowstats or where?
And again, when I look at things like housing, rent, food, oil, gasoline, basic clothing, cars etc. over time, the real world US inflation looks a LOT more like the CPI than what Shadowstats claims. Especially over several decades.
I acknowledge that both health care and college education inflation are MUCH higher than the CPI over time, but electronics deflation has also dragged prices for lots of things related to computers down, so they have deflation.
I get that you think the financial situation re certain minorities is unfair. But I just don't get that inflation is anywhere NEAR 10%, even if it seems like it's more than the CPI based on what some families buy.
As a sanity check, here's a piece on "marketbasket" inflation.
https://research.stlouisfed.org/publica ... e-average/
Per the article:
So if you look at the "everyday price index", it shows at about a percent over the CPI from 1995 to 2015. Still in the ballpark of the CPI.
If you look at the market basket index overall for urban consumers (blue line) you get about 3.7%.
Inflation isn't about how one feels about the economy -- it's about measuring how much prices really rise over time.