It’s changed a lot, lol. They have 10x more administrative staff than before. That’s why the cost is so much higher. No one ever brings this up though. They just argue over who should pay the bill. They don’t analyze why the bill is so high. It’s why I can’t take any debate on education or healthcare costs seriously.
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Nothing to see here. Just behave like ostrich @manch, inflation will not exist. There is absolutely no inflation.
The price of lumber and other building materials is up 180%. Here’s why
Metals prices at multi-year highs as supply plays catch-up with demand recovery
Price may go up in the short term as demand comes back because the western world mostly beats Covid but supply hasn’t fully caught up yet.
I don’t get the obsession over college tuition. Only 1/3 of Americans have a college degree and for people who do they only go to college once in their life. Why obsess over price of something you only pay once in your life?
Healthcare cost is a far more serious issue but like college tuition it has nothing to do with inflation. No matter how high the interest rate is they won’t come down. That tells you it’s not inflation. Inflation is a monetary phenomenon.
Inflation comes from wage increases. The $15min wage is inflationary. Go to your local Home Depot. Day laborers want $30hr.
Nobody in construction will work for less than $50 if they have any skills.
Ten years ago day labor was $10. Inflation is here. It is systemic and affects everything. Good news for landlords and homeowners
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Warning seems to be late. I’ve noticed lots of price increases (particularly processed food) lately.
I bought a few cans of tuna fish today. Starkist is down to 4.5 ounces per can. Once was 6 oz, was 5 for the longest time and now 4.5. Other brands have followed suit.
It’s getting easier to eat healthy. Fewer calories, less salt, less fat - because there’s less food in the package.
Look at that hyperinflation.
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Technology is deflationary.
As it drives itself down rows of crops, its 12 cameras scan the ground. An onboard computer, powered by AI, identifies weeds, and the robot’s carbon dioxide lasers then zap and kill the plants.
The Autonomous Weeder can eliminate more than 100,000 weeds per hour and weed 15 to 20 acres of crops in one day — for comparison, Myers said a laborer can weed about one acre of his onions per day.
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Why use a million dollar toy? All you need to do is cover the ground with black plastic. Poke the plants through holes in the plastic. No weeding needed and water evaporation eliminated and soil is warmer… means a longer growing season
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WB now talks about inflation. What talk you?
CPI probably stay at elevated inflation of 3-4% for many months, may be years but many other stuffs are in hyperinflation (>7%). That is my definition of elevated and hyper inflation… not sure what is the generality accepted definition.
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Argentina in 1990. Germany in the 20s, Zimbabwe had hyper inflation. The US in the seventies had up to 10% inflation averaged 6.8%. High but not hyper. Was great if you owned leveraged assets. Not great if you had a fixed income.
Zimbabwe currency is now a collector’s item
Inflation was caused by supply restrictions not demand. The Arab oil embargo was the the primary cause. We now have similar supply restrictions due to Covid. These are outside shocks not caused by internal US policy. Interesting coincidence.
- The dramatic acceleration of inflation between 1972 and 1974 can be traced mainly to three “shocks”: rising food prices, rising energy prices, and the end of the Nixon wage-price controls program. Each of these can be conceptualized as requiring rapid adjustments of some relative prices.
- The equally dramatic deceleration of inflation between 1974 and 1976 can be traced to the simple fact that the three factors just named were not repeated. In other words, double-digit inflation went away “by itself.”
- The state of demand thus had precious little to do with either the acceleration or the deceleration of inflation between 1972 and 1976. This is not to say that aggregate demand management was irrelevant to inflation, but only that it effects were minor compared to the supply shocks. We have already seen the toilet paper and food shortages. Now the news media is talking about fuel shortages from a lack of fuel truck drivers.
263 Anatomy of Double-Digit Inflation in the 1970s
4. While the rate of inflation as measured in the CPI rose about eight percentage points between 1977 and early 1980, the “baseline,” or “underlying,” rate may have risen by as little as three percentage points. The rest of the inflationary acceleration came from “special factors.”
5. The initial impetus for accelerating inflation in 1978 came mainly from the food sector, with some help from mortgage interest rates. The further acceleration into the double-digit range in 1979 mainly reflected soaring energy prices and, once again, rising mortgage rates. Finally, mortgage interest carried the ball almost by itself in early 1980.
6. The 1970s really were different. Energy shocks are quite clearly a product of the brave, new post-OPEC world. Food shocks are not new. We experienced them in the 1940s, but somehow managed to get away
@hanera I agree .
We see inflation for the things which matter. Houses and stocks are up way more than 3% .
As MMT is more widely pushed, we will see increasing number of reports ( that are strategically placed media PR items from FED and government) of secular inflation nearing 0.00000000000000000000000005%.
And lumber. And steel. And fertilizer. And dozens of other essentials. As I mentioned previously some food packages now contain 10% less than they did just a few months ago - for the same price.
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There are two ways people commonly use the term “inflation”. One is just saying price of stuff has increased. That’s fairly uncontroversial. Price of stuff increases all the time.
The second way of using the term is saying price of stuff has increased because of the Fed’s loose monetary policy. It’s this second meaning that I have most trouble with. I don’t think we have seen enough data to support that view.
This is the chart of employment to population ratio. We are still quite some way from clawing back to the pre-Covid level:
So the price increases we have seen, how much of it is due to this temporary labor shortage that will unwind itself in due time? I’d like to give it a few more quarters before yelling “secular inflation” or worse espousing Fed conspiracy theories.
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Gov says unemployment is at 6% and yet no one can find labor. Something doesn’t add up.
Try paying more. Make them an offer they can’t refuse.
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Every job has a value added component. You can’t pay someone an amount in wages greater than the value they add.
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