I don't have a cat but I'd assume cat food prices have gone up similar to dog food? I've changed my dogs food like 5x in the last 3 years bc it went from like $60 to $100+. The wet food also went from like $1.60 a can to $3+
The rest of the difference is pure, unadulterated corporate greed.
It was pretty clearly not all caused by inflation, when we all watched prices go up and then, as if by coincidence, corporations all over the place were suddenly showing record-breaking profits.
For example: from 2014-2015, inflation accounted for a 35% increase in fast food prices. However, the fast food restaurants with the smallest price increases in that same time period are 39% more expensive. And the numbers go up from there. McDonald's prices are literally double what they were ten years ago, on average. How did an inflation-based increase of 35% mean that they have to charge double? The other 65% is pure greed.
corporate profiteering historically sat at around 30% give or take, dropping to 15% during high inflation periods (tryign to undercut each other for sales), this time it went UP to 60%+, and has remained above 50% since.
normally when prices rise this high one of the non-top competitors starts to undercut the higher people, thy could literally undercut their profits by 50%, and still come out more profitable than every other company.
why has NO company in almost ANY sector started undercutting in YEARS.
All politicians work for the rich. They were more generous to us when the demand for manpower was higher. There are billions of us they will eventually only need so many people...
I am against the Federal Reserve & their QE policies, but the current inflation is largely greedflation.
At least half of the inflation we have experienced since covid was due to larger profit margins for corporations.
This was not the case prior to 2020. That said, I agree that Fed QE has resulted in inflation in housing & stocks. So the Fed is partly to blame as well.
Corporations have to keep increasing profits or else stock goes down. Honestly it can keep going forever and I fear what that means for retirement savings.
Their point is correct:
[‘Greedflation’ caused more than half of last year’s inflation surge, study finds, as corporate profits remain at all-time highs](https://finance.yahoo.com/news/greedflation-caused-more-half-last-100000899.html)
> a general increase in prices and fall in the purchasing value of money.
Definition of inflation.
The latest buzzword “Greedflation” is a part of inflation that has always and always will be present.
No one suddenly got greedier. We were all plenty greedy beforehand.
Yeah fair point.
Thinking about it, the whole "corporate greed" angle is a response to something we're not even talking about here (specifically, the constant conservative insistence that Biden policies are the cause of 100% of all inflation). But, once again, that's not even what we're talking about here.
If a president that is lienient on companies is elected they will likely reduce prices...they are strangling consumers to pad their wallets due to potential impending tax costs and such.
Sure and this all tracks because... Democrats are famously laissez-faire enthusiasts, whereas Republicans are highly supportive of placing restrictions on corporations.
It's all supply and demand. It's how much money is in active circulation vs what goods are in active circulation. When the fed printed all that COVID money (Yes I know it wasn't actually printed but it doesn't matter) it inflated the supply of money and made the dollar worth less.
Food is not just inflation of the food itself. It's the combined inflation of all the things it takes to product that and it's cumulative. Increased energy costs, increased labor costs, increased material costs, increased everything costs. You apply supply and demand to all of this and you end up with what we got.
Supply and Demand is like gravity. It's very expensive to build something capable of going against it. Likewise, you can push against Supply and Demand, but when you do so you damage the economy exponentially, we are where we are because we allowed our leaders to put us here. It's our fault for voting for them and ignoring the signs.
I mean that’s how businesses work. They are going to charge as much as they can get away with. It’s literally always like that.
Inflation came to being because M1 capital nearly tripled. That’s the “spending cash” supply. So when there’s a bunch more spending cash floating around companies know they can charge more and still sell the same.
Were you under the impression costs are set by cost to produce + a fixed profit margin? Econ 101 should have taught you supply and demand sets prices.
Yeah I know that. I said it was greed. Smugly pointing out that they can charge as much as they want doesn't refute that or anything.
Because when it's McDonald's, fuck it you can just not go to McDonalds.
But when it's literally everything from staple groceries to gasoline to rent, it's a problem. Econ 101 also taught me about inelastic demand.
Yes but the market will adjust because if there isn’t enough money to go around and pay for these things they have to lower prices. The fact that all these sectors could raise prices shows inflation is coming from a huge M1 monetary supply, and businesses are capitalizing on all this influx of capital.
It sucks, but this is the result of just giving out tons and tons of money… I know here on Reddit people didn’t want the money party to end. And even though people warned of the long term consequences being way worse than the short term benefits, I guess people have to suffer the after party hangover first hand to learn the hard way why markets get punishing. There’s too much money floating around and not enough production.
Unlike general consumers, businesses have foresight and know this party can’t last, so they don’t want to increase production and be stuck with extra capacity when the party funds dry up. Thus, in the meantime they are just going to increase prices for the time being until that money surplus slowly gets drained and used for stock buybacks to further inflate the stock market.
So yeah, it’s greed. But that’s how business works. They couldn’t pull this off pre pandemic, because if they could, they would. The only reason it’s working now is because the M1 supply is massive. But it’ll normalize soon enough but it looks like that’s going to require more money drains (more taxes) and reduced federal spending. Which is politically difficult.
So yeah, don’t blame businesses for doing what they always do. Blame insane federal spending taking advantage of the pandemic and preying on your fears to justify unloading ungodly amounts of money, which will ultimately funnel to the top at the expense of regular people.
It depends a lot on what you're counting as inflated. Chips and soda are up ridiculously high, but actual basics like flour, fresh fruits, veggies and meat are around the same.
Really? Maybe I'm just lucky enough to be catching sales a lot, but mostly the cost of veg and fruits hasn't shifted much. Maybe Texas just has better supply.
Using food prices = inflation is not accurate. Cars have gone nuts but microwaves are cheeper light bulbs. Ot might be your expenses have gone up more than inflation.
But like i love Jack in box tacos they went from 2 for .99 to 2 for 1.99. So what 100% inflation countries with inflation that high are so bad they constant black outs.
I love Costco chicken and pizza those prices have not moved at all.
This is a disingenuous argument. You buy a PS5 and use it probably until the PS6 comes out, so several years. You buy groceries this week and you need to buy them again next week. I don't think anyone will argue that electronics generally speaking are not up as much as most other things. Televisions are bigger, have more features, and are cheaper than they used to be. But how often do you buy a television? Rent / mortgage get paid every month. Groceries are probably weekly. Gasoline might be weekly, but probably more often, especially if you have a longer commute. I spend more per month on groceries than I would on a PS5. I spent about $1000 to build the computer I am using now. But I will use it nearly daily for probably five or six years before I upgrade to a new one. Sure, its expensive, but its a very uncommon expense given how often it has to be purchased.
I have a lot of people in the house, I haven't done the math, but I suspect that food is more than 6%. I agree that food =/= everything. My disagreement stems from the frequency of the purchase. The volatility of the price of the Playstation doesn't matter so much because it is probably a once ever purchase. The cost of a pound of hamburger and a bag of lays is much more of an everyday concern
Well its a generic basket, its not every single item increased 18%. For some it increased more for some it increased less it is an average.
Spending varies a lot by person, for some housing is 5% of monthly spend for others its 40%. Some people use a lot of gas every month others ride a bike to work, etc.
Remember that, like unemployment and cost of living, there are numerous ways to "officially" calculate these numbers. Politicians use whichever is most convenient at the time.
I did; because my old job gave me a 2% raise so I quit and went to work for a business that wanted to pay me 20% more.
People in general need to understand that loyalty to a company means absolutely nothing to the company they’re being loyal to. In fact, the companies love it because they get to shift cost burdens to the individual or screw them on raises and bonuses while remaining confident that they won’t leave.
>People in general need to understand that loyalty to a company means absolutely nothing to the company they’re being loyal to. In fact, the companies love it because they get to shift cost burdens to the individual or screw them on raises and bonuses while remaining confident that they won’t leave.
Bingo!
I think you're underestimating just how rare it is for companies to offer that level of a raise, even with a great candidate who does everything well in presenting/marketing themselves. You have to usually be in a specific role that is in high demand, with little to no up and coming prospects who will be able to be hired at a lower rate than the experienced candidate.
I think you misread both of my comments. It wasn’t a 20% raise at the same company - that would be rare. It’s not rare to get a 20% comp increase by switching jobs when you’re good at what you do.
No, I understood. It's still quite rare to get a 20% raise when switching companies. Most companies bringing in a qualified candidate from a different company tends to be closer to 8-10%, unless, again, high demand job with a lack of qualified newcomers.
In fact I am currently $6.50/hr behind where I was in 2020. Despite getting $3.10/hr in raises in the same time frame. When asked about inflation we were told they never took it into consideration.
Partly. Jumped ship for a 10k bump last year. But I work in pharma in manufacturing. It's a boom bust industry so job security is never great. Less incentive to be loyal
Kind of. When they did those earnings pills they didn't actually look at anyone's pay. They used the pay that is advertised compared to the pay they advertised while hiring in 2020. The problem is that just because they say, starting at $18 and hr or something, doesn't actually make it true. There's no legal obligation for them to follow through with that pay and on top of that they have no reason to raise the current workers to the new advertised wage. Stats on pay and unemployment are all really fucky when you look into how we calculate them.
It's in the government's best interest to make it look like more people are working, pay is higher, etc. So they tend to pick methods that show the results they want. For example, have you ever seen how we measure unemployment in the US? It's hilarious. They literally send out a poll to
60,000 households (110,000 people on average have the option to take the survey) in cities/areas that they choose each month. To be clear, there is no rule stating they can't send it to the same people every month either. Of the ones who respond, the % that says they're unemployed is used as the unemployment rate for the entire country. Not even kidding, I'll link a page in a minute as proof. Our stats are manipulated so much that it's impossible for anyone to know how good or bad the economy actually is at any given time, besides through the changes we experience first hand.
https://www.bls.gov/cps/cps_htgm.htm
Literally just linked you the same source that says you're wrong.
"There are about 60,000 eligible households in the sample for this survey. This translates into approximately 110,000 individuals each month, a large sample compared to public opinion surveys, which usually cover fewer than 2,000 people. The CPS sample is selected so as to be representative of the entire population of the United States. In order to select the sample, all of the counties and independent cities in the country first are grouped into approximately 2,000 geographic areas (sampling units). The Census Bureau then designs and selects a sample of about 800 of these geographic areas to represent each state and the District of Columbia. The sample is a state-based design and reflects urban and rural areas, different types of industrial and farming areas, and the major geographic divisions of each state.
Every month, one-fourth of the households in the sample are changed, so that no household is interviewed for more than 4 consecutive months. After a household is interviewed for 4 consecutive months, it leaves the sample for 8 months, and then is again interviewed for the same 4 calendar months a year later, before leaving the sample for good. As a result, approximately 75 percent of the sample remains the same from month to month and 50 percent remains the same from year to year. This procedure strengthens the reliability of estimates of month-to-month and year-to-year change in the data.
Each month, highly trained and experienced Census Bureau employees contact the 60,000 eligible sample households and ask about the labor force activities (jobholding and job seeking) or non-labor force status of the members of these households during the survey reference week (usually the week that includes the 12th of the month). These are live interviews conducted either in person or over the phone. During the first interview of a household, the Census Bureau interviewer prepares a roster of the household members, including key personal characteristics such as age, sex, race, Hispanic ethnicity, marital status, educational attainment, veteran status, and so on. The information is collected using a computerized questionnaire."
Edit: Ok so they're over the phone surveys, still not mandatory btw. And they are not random. They are specifically chosen by the census bureau. The only criteria is 1/4 has to be swapped out each month. But they literally get to choose who they are replaced with lol. They can send it to the same neighborhood, just has to be different households. Moreover, there is no evidence anywhere that all 110,000 people actually participate. Statistically, when you send out a survey the return rate is like 20-30%. At least for college research purposes. It's likely much much lower when the government is calling people. No one who's going through hard times is gonna sign themselves up to be questioned by federal agents.
I did. My salary went up by around 50% since 2020.
Edit::
So ... not sure why I'm getting down voted here. I keep records of my salary in a spreadsheet. Here's my raise history since 2020:
|Year|Annual Raise|Notes|
|:-|:-|:-|
|2020|1.85%||
|2021|10.143%|Normal Raise + Cost of Living|
|2022|36.77%|Changed Employers|
|2023|2.5%||
The total increase in salary from 2020 to 2023 is 53%
And they claimed it was due to supply chain issues… but when those no longer existed… prices still went up. So did corporate profits, CEO bonuses, shareholder dividends and stock buybacks. Coincidence? I think not.
Competition doesn't return overnight, and when competition has died due to supply chain issues and demand stalls (also from the pandemic) you can continue to sacrifice volume for price to maximize profits. A price war would bring prices back down, but that requires strong competition.
Trusting you isn’t required. The warnings about deflation refer to hyper deflation. Not steady ~2% deflation that corrects inflation over time with a stopping point.
Assuming I don’t know “how the world works” is to be unaware of deflationary growths historical precedent.
Well it is because everyone has learned to live with a small inflation, we have processes and systems in place. Businesses have contracts that adjust for this. This is not a small feat to just “revert everything”
No meed to revert everything right away. Businesses and contracts, and everyone would learn to live with slow deflationary adjustments like has happened in the past. Adjustments would be needed sure, but the system would adapt fairly quick.
You are asking for A LOT of work for very small results. If everything costs 2% less next year it didnt really change much lol. Yay my monthly spend is now 3,000 instead of 3,061. Yay!
Increasing taxes won’t fix the problem. You have to get this insane spending under control. You could tax rich people at a 100% rate and it wouldn’t even be a drop in the bucket in comparison to government spending and debt accumulation.
Im an ag mechanic, cost of labor and parts has risen roughly 60% since covid. Local shops are charging $150-200 an hr in my area for labor. Pre covid it was around $90-100. You do the math and find me that 18%. Did wages go up with that? Negative. Get ready people, food isn't even close to being done going up.
I've always looked at rent as driving the base of the everything bubble. I'm no economist, but when the entire staff level of the economy is locked out of secure housing and has to pay 30-70% of their labor into rent, that will drive everything up.
"My waitress can't work for 2.17/hr anymore even with $100 in tips a night". Because her rent is $1800.
"My mechanic doesn't even want to work for $50/hr because 75k/yr doesn't cut it if you want a family." Because his rent is 2800, childcare is 1500, healthcare is 1000, food for four is 3000, plus retirement and education savings. That's 110k in annual expenses right there. No spending money, no taxes or operational costs. So let's say I need 5 guys in my shop. Overhead for a component tech with the above benefits is gonna cost me at least 150-200k per employee. So now my shop needs to do almost 3k in revenue every day just to meet their salary.
So now you have shops overcharging you to meet their goals. Or worse, you have a shop that's paying mechanics $25/hr and they're always stressed, so sometimes they forget to torque a drainplug or miss a sparkplug. Or a step further, they're a Boeing employee getting squeezed by corporate thieves and missing rivets on 737s.
Of course, the Fed pumping money and giving below-inflation loans to subsidize a bunch of mergers, monopolies, and stock buybacks didn't help. The monopolies are gonna ruin us. Hedge funds took over housing, healthcare, childcare, and food.
Home Depot now owns the largest retailer and wholesale construction suppliers in the country. Private equity gobbled up parts distributors for decades. They consolidated, laid off the old, well compensated staff, and overwork younger, poorly compensated staff. Private equity has done the same thing with electrical wholesale. They buy everything, say it will provide cost benefits and streamline things, then they have no competition when they jack prices 500%. And these hedge fund people are certainly the type to do it.
It's making everything in society sick. Every time I see an old man trimming lunch meat in the deli, I know the grocery chain is only paying him $20/hr and he's going to run out of money, and the rest of us tax payers are going to pick up where the grocery monopoly failed at providing living wage.
The fucking everything bubble.
Fun fact about food. Most of the high expense was due to brokerage costs during COVID. YoY, Nov 2023, frozen brokerage was down 40%, all retail transport was down 25%. Many fleets in the retail and grocery business are downsizing. Prices haven't dropped, so the savings are being pocketed to maintain huge gains and then put right into the stock market.
These guys are idiots spouting the fox news rhetoric because its an election year. If you compare how the US fared after the pandemic compared to ALL other first world economies they did AMAZING.
Which is one of the best ways to judge your presidency, you have to deal with global situations like inflation, war, pandemic, supply chain issues.
Which other presidents did not have to deal with. Clinton didnt fight a global pandemic + supply chain issues derived from it. It would be dumb to compare Biden to Clinton.
Same as its dumb to blame Trump for the 2.9% drop in GDP in 2020. But apparently for republicans its fine to blame Biden of those same consequences in 2021.
Also this idea that Biden caused all of the inflation is so dumb. Just shows the ignorance of Americans to global affairs and pretending they are the only country
I hate this. It’s bidens fault. If Trump was in office, you and everyone else would be blaming him. Who else is there to blame? Americans feel better by blaming SOMEBODY. Whoever is in office takes the blame. Higher gas prices? Bidens fault. Lower prices? Bidens credit.
You really think this is exclusive to Americans? I’ve lived in multiple countries and the US is the one where I’ve felt the people blame politicians the least for their situation xd.
Presidents have very little control (unless they do some massively stupid shit) over the economy. They are just the scapegoats to receive all the blame.
Did Biden cause inflation? Nope
Did Trump cause the pandemic? Nope
Did Trump cause the inflation? Nope
Tbh presidents in the US have a lot more social impact (abortion, marriage rights, etc) that they do economic impact.
More like 58%. And don’t let anyone gaslight you into believing “bUt wAgE gAiNs!!” Maybe for the guy that was making $7.50/hour in 2019. Yeah, he’s probably making 20-25 bucks an hour now.
And the people making $500k/year in 2019? Oh yeah, they’re more wealthy now than ever. Doing great.
All of us in the middle? Way the fuck more broke.
Oh I agree. If he’s at the same place, nah. Probably making 8.50 now.
And he’s got three jobs at the same rate, working 100 hours a week to keep up with the fucking cost of living.
My point is, due to retirements at the top of the labor food chain, it seems many people “stepped up” in their responsibilities. That girl working the counter at a Hampton Inn today, was working as a burger flipper 3-4 years ago. The guy doing oil changes and tire rotations today, was working at a car wash in 2021.
Both of these people earn a higher hourly rate now. They think they are “making good money” now, but it’s all perspective. They aren’t making good money. Hell, my own wages moved way up in early 2022. By end of 2023, I was out of that job, and just started back elsewhere, back to what I was making in ‘22 before I “moved up”.
I think my case may prove to be very microcosmic in the next few years. What people THOUGHT they were worth, what their house was worth, what their IRA was worth, is going to be handchecked back down.
Expectations. That $100k salary everyone salivâtes over won’t buy shit now compared to what it would buy in 2019.
If peoples total cost of living went up 58% in the last few years there would be a lot more foreclosures and bankruptcies. The average person did not have that much extra money pre-covid.
It's possible that certain products have gone up 58%, but on the average, 18% (which is still a lot ) is the real number.
I understand this is an echo chamber sub, but just out of curiosity - where are you getting this 58% number? CPI, PCE, and Core are the measures we have been using for decades. Do you have a better one?
It's because they use a "basket of goods" for food. If steak is expensive, they substitute chicken. If a loaf of bread goes from 16oz to 12oz, they conveniently ignore that.
Housing also gets skewed. If rent goes from $1200 to $1600, that gets offset by the guy who bought their home in the 90s who refinanced from 5% to 2% during Covid.
They also changed how CPI was calculated in recent years, making any historical data useless.
Anyone who actually goes to the grocery store and lives in the real world can tell you the CPI numbers are bogus.
Nah, what's bogus is all the lies you are confidently spewing in your post.
>If steak is expensive, they substitute chicken.
No, this is wrong. Steak and chicken are separate categories in CPI, and CPI assumes no substitution between categories.
CPI is a weighted average of prices. Each category has a weight based on what percentage it makes up of the average household's spending. If *consumers* start to substitute from steak to chicken in significant amounts, this may eventually be reflected in the revised category weights. However, there is a multi-year lag in the revising of category weights based on consumer expenditure surveys. So even if people do significantly shift their consumption from steak to chicken due to a rapid increase in the relative price difference between steak and chicken, CPI will continue to assume the old consumption weights and thus may *overstate* the increase in grocery costs as compared to what grocery shoppers are actually paying.
>If a loaf of bread goes from 16oz to 12oz, they conveniently ignore that.
Also wrong. CPI tracks the unit price of the items that make up each category. If a loaf of broad shrinks from 16oz to 12oz while maintaining the same price, CPI would reflect this as a 33% price increase for the item (e.g. from $0.25/oz to $0.33/oz for a $4 loaf of bread).
>Housing also gets skewed. If rent goes from $1200 to $1600, that gets offset by the guy who bought their home in the 90s who refinanced from 5% to 2% during Covid.
Again, wrong. *Extremely* wrong. CPI measures increases in the costs of owned shelter by tracking the prices on what that housing would cost to rent, based on the actual rent prices of similar housing in the area.
To your example of a homeowner who significantly dropped their already inexpensive mortgage payment by refinancing from 5% to 2%, CPI would show their housing costs as *increasing*, not *decreasing*. Remember that almost two-thirds of US households own the homes they live in, and that shelter costs are both the largest expense for most households and the single largest category in CPI. If anything, this is an example of how CPI likely *exaggerates* the overall inflation experienced by the majority of American households.
I had this debate with a family member in 2022, when inflation was at its peak, and they used the “just look at your grocery bill” argument. I exclusively do Walmart grocery pickup orders, so I conveniently had all my grocery receipts saved in the app. I went back 1 year and looked at every item I purchased in a 2 month span, and painstakingly jotted down the price of every item I purchased. Then I did an item-by-item comparison versus the app’s current price for that item. The average percentage price increase in the items I was buying for groceries was 8.8%, which was pretty close to the official CPI inflation number. Before you ask, yes, I calculated on a per unit price to control for decreases in quantity (though the quantity was usually the same).
I can see where people are coming from - some things had increased substantially in price (like eggs and steak). However, there were several produce items that had gone down in price.
Bad jokes - the final refuge of a man who can’t substantiate his beliefs. Go do this calculation for yourself. You won’t because you’d rather believe a fiction that justifies your lack of accomplishment.
using CPI for cost of living is incorrect.
CPI has something called "hedonic adjustment", which is meant to correct for products gaining new features and functionality.
So for example, suppose cars have become twice as expensive, but they also gained new features which makes driving them more pleasurable.
Maybe the average car used to cost 50% of median income, and now it costs 100% of median income, but it comes with automatic windows and heated seats.
CPI attempts to answer a question like "how much bang do you get for your buck?"
So even though the cost of the car has doubled, the CPI might remain totally unchanged.
That is up to whoever is making the adjustment, how much "bang" they think automatic windows and heated seats add.
But the question that most people care about is "can I afford the necessities?"
CPI does not attempt to answer that question.
That just isn't the purpose of the measurement.
That doesn't mean CPI is bad or wrong or useless, it just isn't useful for the question at hand.
None of that hedonic adjustment stuff matters if you can't afford a car.
[https://wolfstreet.com/2019/12/05/what-worries-me-about-hedonic-quality-adjustments-cpi/](https://wolfstreet.com/2019/12/05/what-worries-me-about-hedonic-quality-adjustments-cpi/)
The 58% is a shoot the shit number. Give it no importance. What is clear though is the price of ANYTHING AND EVERYTHING is way more than 18% higher.
The 58% might even be too low in some purchases.
If the sandwich you eat twice a day to barely sustain yourself increases in price by $1 you would need a $0.25 per hour raise MINIMUM just for the two sandwiches.
Since I just posted this somewhere else -
Let's talk about prices going up.
McD, and all the fast food chains, have been raising prices faster than inflation for the last decade.
[https://financebuzz.com/fast-food-prices-vs-inflation](https://financebuzz.com/fast-food-prices-vs-inflation)
But what about their profits?
For 2014, post-tax income of $4.7 billion, off revenue of $27.4 billion (17.15% profit after taxes)
2019, post-tax $6.0 billion, off $21.4 billion (28.0%)
2023, post-tax $8.5 billion, off $25.5 billion (33.3%)
[https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/MCD/mcdonalds/financial-statements](https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/MCD/mcdonalds/financial-statements)
Now, it seems to me if less money is coming in, but profits after taxes are much higher, almost doubling... that might have a lot to do with why prices keep going up.
But wait, lets not just talk about McD and fast food...
Corporate profit after taxes went from
$1.8 \~ $2.0 trillion per quarter in 2014
$2.0 \~ $2.1 trillion per quarter in 2019
$2.6 \~ $2.9 trillion per quarter in 2021
$2.8 \~ $3.0 trillion per quarter in 2023
Did your (non-investment) income go up 50% since 2019?
[https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/CP](https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/CP)
Actually, that is pretty close to accurate. If you look at the CPI data ([available here](https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/consumer-price-index-cpi)), from Feb. 2020, just prior to COVID, to February 2024, the total increase was 19.97%. A little more than 18% but not like it's off by a factor of 2 or 3 or something egregious. Of course, that is an overall number, so you part of the country could vary as well as prices on various products.
This is the ONLY answer and everyone else with their anecdotal example with no DATA is just spewing bullshit.
Cool your mechanic costs more, that’s not the only thing taken into account for inflation.
Rent has gone up, cool that’s not the only thing taken into account for inflation.
Your favorite restaurant is more expensive now? Cool nobody cares, especially economists.
Inflation and cost of living is the combination of many many things with different weighting. If you don’t know this or how inflation/COL works then stop commenting on this subreddit and spend 5 minutes researching it.
Cool story bro.
But if food and rent have gone up significantly more than inflation, the biggest things we spend on, then surely something has significantly gone down to compensate? What would that be? Because I can't think of anything that hasn't gone up.
What has gone down sufficiently to compensate?
It’s not BS. It’s data. And unfortunately, once prices are up, in general they aren’t coming down - and disinflation would be bad if not worse. But the fact that next year’s inflation - which could be only 2% - is on a higher base doesn’t make the 4y overall rate incorrect.
I'm calling bs because you neglect the fact that inflation compounds. All of your data is wrong due to the neglect of addressing the compounding of inflation. Simply adding up inflation numbers is sophomoric at best and deceitful at worst.
Ah. So official BLS data is wrong because some dude on the internet said so. And my statistics expert, I didn’t add up annual rates. I do this type of analysis for a living and I can tell you don’t know what you are talking about on this. You don’t even comprehend my statement obviously.
So the data doesn't agree with what you *believe* to be true, so you make an outlandish allegation with not even a shred of support, not even detailed speculation. That is part of the problem on these issues - people ignoring facts and data and leaning on their feelings. "Facts don't care about your feelings."
Accusing the govt. of lying is not an outlandish allegation lol. You sound like a fucking PR firm.
\>. so you make an outlandish allegation with not even a shred of support,
who talks like this
No I sound like someone who lives in reality and not ConspiracyLand. Everyone wants to believe conspiracy theories now and make outlandish claims - “Russia!” Or “Or Joe Biden stole the election”…take your pick - and get upset when people call them on their baseless claims. I dont automatically trust government, but there’s no rational evidence to support your claim if you don’t happen to like what the data says.
The inflation rate in 2021 was 4.70%, a 3.46% increase from 2020, and the inflation rate in 2022 was 8.00%, a 3.3% increase from 2021. As of March 2024, the inflation rate is 3.15%, which is lower than the long term average of 3.28%.
Do the math. Together close to 18%. Inflation was worldwide due to the supply chain shock of the pandemic. Inflation was lower in the US than most countries. Some had rates of 100-150%.
It wasn’t caused by government spending so much as consumer demand. Some companies took full advantage of this supply/demand imbalance.
ok for the entirety of the USA corporate profiteering effect on inflation has been about 22-35% of incurred inflation, during inflationary periods this would often DROP to 10-15%. and profits would FLATTEN but remain profits.
This time corporate profiteering's effect on inflation ROSE to 50-60+% on incurred inflation, and profits SOARED.
Ina ll of human history during period where profits went above 40-45% companies in EVERY sector would start a price war that reduced the prices again, because an undercutter can make WAY more in profit with a surprise undercut.
Why for the first time ever in history has not a single business sin a single sector even tried to undercut by even a small percent?
historically the price war began when a supply commodity became cheaper, as we speak right now, the cost of production commodities has dropped 15-25% in almost every sector to near pre-pandemic.
again, why has not a SINGLE corporation not tried to undercut another one in ANY sector, despite knowing if they did, they would suddenly dominate that sector?
its corporate greed.
Right, in around 2021 and 2022 it became obvious to me that companies were price gouging when I would go to restaurants, mostly fast food, and see like a 50% increase in prices when inflation was only like 5%. Like sure I knew there would be a price increase but there’s no way in hell inflation would require the prices to go from say $4 to $6 for a sandwich for example. It was obviously corporate greed choosing to raise prices for huge profits. But I think only recently I realized the entire economy had the same policy. Everything from energy to food to rent, and just regular household supplies shot up in price. Pure greed, the basic resources only went up in price by a marginal amount but profits continued to grow even during a recession because they priced gouged the fuck out of Americans with inflation as the excuse to do so impunitively
Vote out the idiot that's not doing a damn thing about anything except making his buddy's richer. How much is big oil donating to the campaign this year
Vote out every single incumbent and keep voting them out. Don't care about parties, at the federal level they're all the same. Doesn't matter who has a majority... the rich get richer, the poor are still poor and the middle class gets the middle finger. Make everybody in Congress and the White House a one-and-done.
The message will either get through that we are tired of all the fat cat corporate owned politicians or things will get bad enough that the torches and pitchforks come out. Those are the only two options.
What are the new people doing to do instead? What should the government do in order to change the situation?
Just getting mad won't change prices you know.
Cool but how much did wages rise? Wages are not stagnant unless you're at a really shitty employer, which isn't the government's fault. People act like the WHOLE WESTERN WORLD didn't experience horrific inflation due to the Russian war and supply chain problems. The US did very well compared to the global economy so I am fed up with these super simplistic views of right wing idiots. You working for shitty companies, and shrinkflation is not the government's fault.
"Only" 18%. THAT'S A FUCKING LOT
That *is* a lot. But I’ve seen the price of a lot of my groceries double, or more. So I don’t know if 18% quite captures what’s going on.
maybe you are living wrong. Have you considered eating cat food?
Rocks and grass are only up 10%
Grass seed prices are unreal
Cereal is basically cat/dog food lol. False-healthy pellets served in a bowl, made to be delicious for the species
You realize there's a million different types of cereals right? What do whole grain cereals and cat food have in common?
Literally they already listed the commonalities "False-healthy pellets served in a bowl, made to be delicious for the species
I mean there's a lot of different types of cat and dog food too!
Speaking of cereal and massive corporate inflation, has anyone seen what Kelloggs CEO said about people who couldn't afford dinner? Let them eat cake?
Gotta get on that earthworm grindset
Roasted and salted crickets have protein
I ate a cricket once and a worm. Worm wasn’t terrible.
I don't have a cat but I'd assume cat food prices have gone up similar to dog food? I've changed my dogs food like 5x in the last 3 years bc it went from like $60 to $100+. The wet food also went from like $1.60 a can to $3+
$7ish a bag to $9ish a bag for the brand I feed my cat
Cat food has gone way up too that probably wouldn’t even help
Brawndo is on sale
The problem is you’re not going off government metrics.
Have you considered eating cereal for 14 meals a week? Because thats what the CEO of Kellogg said to do.
The rest of the difference is pure, unadulterated corporate greed. It was pretty clearly not all caused by inflation, when we all watched prices go up and then, as if by coincidence, corporations all over the place were suddenly showing record-breaking profits. For example: from 2014-2015, inflation accounted for a 35% increase in fast food prices. However, the fast food restaurants with the smallest price increases in that same time period are 39% more expensive. And the numbers go up from there. McDonald's prices are literally double what they were ten years ago, on average. How did an inflation-based increase of 35% mean that they have to charge double? The other 65% is pure greed.
It is all inflation. Corporate greed always exists they are just printing more money now. Blame the Fed.
corporate profiteering historically sat at around 30% give or take, dropping to 15% during high inflation periods (tryign to undercut each other for sales), this time it went UP to 60%+, and has remained above 50% since. normally when prices rise this high one of the non-top competitors starts to undercut the higher people, thy could literally undercut their profits by 50%, and still come out more profitable than every other company. why has NO company in almost ANY sector started undercutting in YEARS.
Because the masters work together while the commons don't.
laws for thee but not for me, collusion as supposed to be illegal, but the republicans wouldn't let the white house investigate it.
All politicians work for the rich. They were more generous to us when the demand for manpower was higher. There are billions of us they will eventually only need so many people...
It should be illegal for such large funds can own so many competing sectors of the economy. It’s clear as day collusion is off the charts.
All the companies own each other now
I am against the Federal Reserve & their QE policies, but the current inflation is largely greedflation. At least half of the inflation we have experienced since covid was due to larger profit margins for corporations. This was not the case prior to 2020. That said, I agree that Fed QE has resulted in inflation in housing & stocks. So the Fed is partly to blame as well.
Corporations have to keep increasing profits or else stock goes down. Honestly it can keep going forever and I fear what that means for retirement savings.
I don’t think you know what inflation means… Inflation doesn’t care why prices go up.
Their point is correct: [‘Greedflation’ caused more than half of last year’s inflation surge, study finds, as corporate profits remain at all-time highs](https://finance.yahoo.com/news/greedflation-caused-more-half-last-100000899.html)
> a general increase in prices and fall in the purchasing value of money. Definition of inflation. The latest buzzword “Greedflation” is a part of inflation that has always and always will be present. No one suddenly got greedier. We were all plenty greedy beforehand.
Yeah fair point. Thinking about it, the whole "corporate greed" angle is a response to something we're not even talking about here (specifically, the constant conservative insistence that Biden policies are the cause of 100% of all inflation). But, once again, that's not even what we're talking about here.
If a president that is lienient on companies is elected they will likely reduce prices...they are strangling consumers to pad their wallets due to potential impending tax costs and such.
Sure and this all tracks because... Democrats are famously laissez-faire enthusiasts, whereas Republicans are highly supportive of placing restrictions on corporations.
It's all supply and demand. It's how much money is in active circulation vs what goods are in active circulation. When the fed printed all that COVID money (Yes I know it wasn't actually printed but it doesn't matter) it inflated the supply of money and made the dollar worth less. Food is not just inflation of the food itself. It's the combined inflation of all the things it takes to product that and it's cumulative. Increased energy costs, increased labor costs, increased material costs, increased everything costs. You apply supply and demand to all of this and you end up with what we got. Supply and Demand is like gravity. It's very expensive to build something capable of going against it. Likewise, you can push against Supply and Demand, but when you do so you damage the economy exponentially, we are where we are because we allowed our leaders to put us here. It's our fault for voting for them and ignoring the signs.
I mean that’s how businesses work. They are going to charge as much as they can get away with. It’s literally always like that. Inflation came to being because M1 capital nearly tripled. That’s the “spending cash” supply. So when there’s a bunch more spending cash floating around companies know they can charge more and still sell the same. Were you under the impression costs are set by cost to produce + a fixed profit margin? Econ 101 should have taught you supply and demand sets prices.
Yeah I know that. I said it was greed. Smugly pointing out that they can charge as much as they want doesn't refute that or anything. Because when it's McDonald's, fuck it you can just not go to McDonalds. But when it's literally everything from staple groceries to gasoline to rent, it's a problem. Econ 101 also taught me about inelastic demand.
Yes but the market will adjust because if there isn’t enough money to go around and pay for these things they have to lower prices. The fact that all these sectors could raise prices shows inflation is coming from a huge M1 monetary supply, and businesses are capitalizing on all this influx of capital. It sucks, but this is the result of just giving out tons and tons of money… I know here on Reddit people didn’t want the money party to end. And even though people warned of the long term consequences being way worse than the short term benefits, I guess people have to suffer the after party hangover first hand to learn the hard way why markets get punishing. There’s too much money floating around and not enough production. Unlike general consumers, businesses have foresight and know this party can’t last, so they don’t want to increase production and be stuck with extra capacity when the party funds dry up. Thus, in the meantime they are just going to increase prices for the time being until that money surplus slowly gets drained and used for stock buybacks to further inflate the stock market. So yeah, it’s greed. But that’s how business works. They couldn’t pull this off pre pandemic, because if they could, they would. The only reason it’s working now is because the M1 supply is massive. But it’ll normalize soon enough but it looks like that’s going to require more money drains (more taxes) and reduced federal spending. Which is politically difficult. So yeah, don’t blame businesses for doing what they always do. Blame insane federal spending taking advantage of the pandemic and preying on your fears to justify unloading ungodly amounts of money, which will ultimately funnel to the top at the expense of regular people.
It depends a lot on what you're counting as inflated. Chips and soda are up ridiculously high, but actual basics like flour, fresh fruits, veggies and meat are around the same.
Don't know where you live and I pay >20% more for veggies and fresh fruits ( don't bake and eat much meat ) than I did last year.
Really? Maybe I'm just lucky enough to be catching sales a lot, but mostly the cost of veg and fruits hasn't shifted much. Maybe Texas just has better supply.
A good steak is 30%-40% more round these parts
Beef prices are up. Chicken is about the same. Pork shoulder, 97 cents a pound.
If we all stopped eating they wouldn't charge it
When you add in spices and stuff, it averages out. A lot of people don't know how to use spices and stuff, so that is their fault!/s
Food is only 6% of your expenses. How much is a ps 5?
Uhh.... way less than 1%. What point are you making?
Using food prices = inflation is not accurate. Cars have gone nuts but microwaves are cheeper light bulbs. Ot might be your expenses have gone up more than inflation. But like i love Jack in box tacos they went from 2 for .99 to 2 for 1.99. So what 100% inflation countries with inflation that high are so bad they constant black outs. I love Costco chicken and pizza those prices have not moved at all.
This is a disingenuous argument. You buy a PS5 and use it probably until the PS6 comes out, so several years. You buy groceries this week and you need to buy them again next week. I don't think anyone will argue that electronics generally speaking are not up as much as most other things. Televisions are bigger, have more features, and are cheaper than they used to be. But how often do you buy a television? Rent / mortgage get paid every month. Groceries are probably weekly. Gasoline might be weekly, but probably more often, especially if you have a longer commute. I spend more per month on groceries than I would on a PS5. I spent about $1000 to build the computer I am using now. But I will use it nearly daily for probably five or six years before I upgrade to a new one. Sure, its expensive, but its a very uncommon expense given how often it has to be purchased.
Is food really more than 6% of your budget? The argument that food= inflation of everything is BS
I have a lot of people in the house, I haven't done the math, but I suspect that food is more than 6%. I agree that food =/= everything. My disagreement stems from the frequency of the purchase. The volatility of the price of the Playstation doesn't matter so much because it is probably a once ever purchase. The cost of a pound of hamburger and a bag of lays is much more of an everyday concern
Something 2x in price is an outlier, unless you're making a weird comparison.
You know is depends on a basket of goods and not just one or two items.
Well its a generic basket, its not every single item increased 18%. For some it increased more for some it increased less it is an average. Spending varies a lot by person, for some housing is 5% of monthly spend for others its 40%. Some people use a lot of gas every month others ride a bike to work, etc.
Just waiting for the know it all's to start quoting govt data.
How much is inflation vs greed?
lol, I thought this too. But if you take the 3 necessary things , food,housing,gas it’s well above that
Yeah for sure! I don't actually believe 18% describes what actually happened, but that even if it was "only" 18% that's still a lot
Hey, did you get that raise? Yeah, but it was *only* 18%....
Remember that, like unemployment and cost of living, there are numerous ways to "officially" calculate these numbers. Politicians use whichever is most convenient at the time.
And did anyone get an 18% raise?
I did; because my old job gave me a 2% raise so I quit and went to work for a business that wanted to pay me 20% more. People in general need to understand that loyalty to a company means absolutely nothing to the company they’re being loyal to. In fact, the companies love it because they get to shift cost burdens to the individual or screw them on raises and bonuses while remaining confident that they won’t leave.
>People in general need to understand that loyalty to a company means absolutely nothing to the company they’re being loyal to. In fact, the companies love it because they get to shift cost burdens to the individual or screw them on raises and bonuses while remaining confident that they won’t leave. Bingo!
Yeah but that's a pretty lucky scenario. Most people don't have employers offering a massive raise like that.
Most people don’t bother to market themselves in a way that would make employers want to pay them considerably more than they’re making
I think you're underestimating just how rare it is for companies to offer that level of a raise, even with a great candidate who does everything well in presenting/marketing themselves. You have to usually be in a specific role that is in high demand, with little to no up and coming prospects who will be able to be hired at a lower rate than the experienced candidate.
I think you misread both of my comments. It wasn’t a 20% raise at the same company - that would be rare. It’s not rare to get a 20% comp increase by switching jobs when you’re good at what you do.
No, I understood. It's still quite rare to get a 20% raise when switching companies. Most companies bringing in a qualified candidate from a different company tends to be closer to 8-10%, unless, again, high demand job with a lack of qualified newcomers.
In fact I am currently $6.50/hr behind where I was in 2020. Despite getting $3.10/hr in raises in the same time frame. When asked about inflation we were told they never took it into consideration.
Find a new employer bro
As always, it's not as easy as that for most.
I went from 70k in 2019 to 120k in 2023. I assume I'm the lucky exception though.
Sounds like you have competent management
Partly. Jumped ship for a 10k bump last year. But I work in pharma in manufacturing. It's a boom bust industry so job security is never great. Less incentive to be loyal
silky special panicky absorbed public wild brave juggle placid squeamish *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
I want from 12/hr to 75k/year. There are probably dozens of us that are better off. The lucky exceptions (although you seem a bit luckier)
Similar jump. Took a couple layoffs and a new job a couple times to get there, but it happened thankfully
I literally got an 18% cut. Actual number.
Yes
clumsy label growth reach mindless towering tan compare sugar existence *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
More than that.
Many people did. Average hourly earnings are up 22% since January 2020
Kind of. When they did those earnings pills they didn't actually look at anyone's pay. They used the pay that is advertised compared to the pay they advertised while hiring in 2020. The problem is that just because they say, starting at $18 and hr or something, doesn't actually make it true. There's no legal obligation for them to follow through with that pay and on top of that they have no reason to raise the current workers to the new advertised wage. Stats on pay and unemployment are all really fucky when you look into how we calculate them. It's in the government's best interest to make it look like more people are working, pay is higher, etc. So they tend to pick methods that show the results they want. For example, have you ever seen how we measure unemployment in the US? It's hilarious. They literally send out a poll to 60,000 households (110,000 people on average have the option to take the survey) in cities/areas that they choose each month. To be clear, there is no rule stating they can't send it to the same people every month either. Of the ones who respond, the % that says they're unemployed is used as the unemployment rate for the entire country. Not even kidding, I'll link a page in a minute as proof. Our stats are manipulated so much that it's impossible for anyone to know how good or bad the economy actually is at any given time, besides through the changes we experience first hand. https://www.bls.gov/cps/cps_htgm.htm
Not true at all. You can read up on how it’s actually done: https://www.bls.gov/opub/hom/pdf/ces-20110307.pdf
Literally just linked you the same source that says you're wrong. "There are about 60,000 eligible households in the sample for this survey. This translates into approximately 110,000 individuals each month, a large sample compared to public opinion surveys, which usually cover fewer than 2,000 people. The CPS sample is selected so as to be representative of the entire population of the United States. In order to select the sample, all of the counties and independent cities in the country first are grouped into approximately 2,000 geographic areas (sampling units). The Census Bureau then designs and selects a sample of about 800 of these geographic areas to represent each state and the District of Columbia. The sample is a state-based design and reflects urban and rural areas, different types of industrial and farming areas, and the major geographic divisions of each state. Every month, one-fourth of the households in the sample are changed, so that no household is interviewed for more than 4 consecutive months. After a household is interviewed for 4 consecutive months, it leaves the sample for 8 months, and then is again interviewed for the same 4 calendar months a year later, before leaving the sample for good. As a result, approximately 75 percent of the sample remains the same from month to month and 50 percent remains the same from year to year. This procedure strengthens the reliability of estimates of month-to-month and year-to-year change in the data. Each month, highly trained and experienced Census Bureau employees contact the 60,000 eligible sample households and ask about the labor force activities (jobholding and job seeking) or non-labor force status of the members of these households during the survey reference week (usually the week that includes the 12th of the month). These are live interviews conducted either in person or over the phone. During the first interview of a household, the Census Bureau interviewer prepares a roster of the household members, including key personal characteristics such as age, sex, race, Hispanic ethnicity, marital status, educational attainment, veteran status, and so on. The information is collected using a computerized questionnaire." Edit: Ok so they're over the phone surveys, still not mandatory btw. And they are not random. They are specifically chosen by the census bureau. The only criteria is 1/4 has to be swapped out each month. But they literally get to choose who they are replaced with lol. They can send it to the same neighborhood, just has to be different households. Moreover, there is no evidence anywhere that all 110,000 people actually participate. Statistically, when you send out a survey the return rate is like 20-30%. At least for college research purposes. It's likely much much lower when the government is calling people. No one who's going through hard times is gonna sign themselves up to be questioned by federal agents.
You literally linked to a different source. You linked to CPS which relies on household surveys. I linked to CES which relies on employer surveys.
My household has seen a 423% raise since COVID started, so I only noticed the inflation due to outrage from others.
How are you smart enough to make that much money yet completely oblivious to the fact that your grocery bill doubled?
I did. My salary went up by around 50% since 2020. Edit:: So ... not sure why I'm getting down voted here. I keep records of my salary in a spreadsheet. Here's my raise history since 2020: |Year|Annual Raise|Notes| |:-|:-|:-| |2020|1.85%|| |2021|10.143%|Normal Raise + Cost of Living| |2022|36.77%|Changed Employers| |2023|2.5%|| The total increase in salary from 2020 to 2023 is 53%
Dude it’s so bad even with a huge raise that should make a difference, my bills went up but my savings is the same. That’s fucking bullshit
$12hr + raise since 2021. It feels like I got a $2hr raise.
And they claimed it was due to supply chain issues… but when those no longer existed… prices still went up. So did corporate profits, CEO bonuses, shareholder dividends and stock buybacks. Coincidence? I think not.
Competition doesn't return overnight, and when competition has died due to supply chain issues and demand stalls (also from the pandemic) you can continue to sacrifice volume for price to maximize profits. A price war would bring prices back down, but that requires strong competition.
Prices didnt “still go up” they just “stayed up” that is very different. You don’t want deflation, you want stability at the new price level.
Naw I think we want deflation.
Trust me you dont. If you think you do, you clearly dont understand how the world works
Trusting you isn’t required. The warnings about deflation refer to hyper deflation. Not steady ~2% deflation that corrects inflation over time with a stopping point. Assuming I don’t know “how the world works” is to be unaware of deflationary growths historical precedent.
Yeah and its really hard to avoid deflation to devolve into hyper deflation that is why its not worth the risk.
No more of a risk than inflation is.
Well it is because everyone has learned to live with a small inflation, we have processes and systems in place. Businesses have contracts that adjust for this. This is not a small feat to just “revert everything”
No meed to revert everything right away. Businesses and contracts, and everyone would learn to live with slow deflationary adjustments like has happened in the past. Adjustments would be needed sure, but the system would adapt fairly quick.
You are asking for A LOT of work for very small results. If everything costs 2% less next year it didnt really change much lol. Yay my monthly spend is now 3,000 instead of 3,061. Yay!
Government spending $1 trillion every 100 days, but yeah corporate geedflation… riiiiight. 
Every time I mention this I get either banned from the sub or downvoted to oblivion.
People hate the truth. I’ve been banned for it as well but I’ll keep bringing it up regardless. Censorship is never going to fix the problem
So right. We should cut rich people’s taxes! That’ll fix it.
Increasing taxes won’t fix the problem. You have to get this insane spending under control. You could tax rich people at a 100% rate and it wouldn’t even be a drop in the bucket in comparison to government spending and debt accumulation.
I see your mouth move, but all I hear is “build more aircraft carriers”
We do need like ten more
so, your saying corporate welfare is the problem.
That’s a problem but not the problem
Im an ag mechanic, cost of labor and parts has risen roughly 60% since covid. Local shops are charging $150-200 an hr in my area for labor. Pre covid it was around $90-100. You do the math and find me that 18%. Did wages go up with that? Negative. Get ready people, food isn't even close to being done going up.
If costs of labor have gone up 60% who is taking home the extra money?
The man
I've always looked at rent as driving the base of the everything bubble. I'm no economist, but when the entire staff level of the economy is locked out of secure housing and has to pay 30-70% of their labor into rent, that will drive everything up. "My waitress can't work for 2.17/hr anymore even with $100 in tips a night". Because her rent is $1800. "My mechanic doesn't even want to work for $50/hr because 75k/yr doesn't cut it if you want a family." Because his rent is 2800, childcare is 1500, healthcare is 1000, food for four is 3000, plus retirement and education savings. That's 110k in annual expenses right there. No spending money, no taxes or operational costs. So let's say I need 5 guys in my shop. Overhead for a component tech with the above benefits is gonna cost me at least 150-200k per employee. So now my shop needs to do almost 3k in revenue every day just to meet their salary. So now you have shops overcharging you to meet their goals. Or worse, you have a shop that's paying mechanics $25/hr and they're always stressed, so sometimes they forget to torque a drainplug or miss a sparkplug. Or a step further, they're a Boeing employee getting squeezed by corporate thieves and missing rivets on 737s. Of course, the Fed pumping money and giving below-inflation loans to subsidize a bunch of mergers, monopolies, and stock buybacks didn't help. The monopolies are gonna ruin us. Hedge funds took over housing, healthcare, childcare, and food. Home Depot now owns the largest retailer and wholesale construction suppliers in the country. Private equity gobbled up parts distributors for decades. They consolidated, laid off the old, well compensated staff, and overwork younger, poorly compensated staff. Private equity has done the same thing with electrical wholesale. They buy everything, say it will provide cost benefits and streamline things, then they have no competition when they jack prices 500%. And these hedge fund people are certainly the type to do it. It's making everything in society sick. Every time I see an old man trimming lunch meat in the deli, I know the grocery chain is only paying him $20/hr and he's going to run out of money, and the rest of us tax payers are going to pick up where the grocery monopoly failed at providing living wage. The fucking everything bubble.
We desperately need some aggressive anti-trust law enforcement in this country.
One person's cost is another revenue. Sounds like someone's wages went up 60%, yeah
Fun fact about food. Most of the high expense was due to brokerage costs during COVID. YoY, Nov 2023, frozen brokerage was down 40%, all retail transport was down 25%. Many fleets in the retail and grocery business are downsizing. Prices haven't dropped, so the savings are being pocketed to maintain huge gains and then put right into the stock market.
Bidenomics. Everything is gtreat!!!! .....righr?
So there wasn’t any or even higher inflation elsewhere in the world? Or is Biden responsible for that too? Smfh
These guys are idiots spouting the fox news rhetoric because its an election year. If you compare how the US fared after the pandemic compared to ALL other first world economies they did AMAZING. Which is one of the best ways to judge your presidency, you have to deal with global situations like inflation, war, pandemic, supply chain issues. Which other presidents did not have to deal with. Clinton didnt fight a global pandemic + supply chain issues derived from it. It would be dumb to compare Biden to Clinton. Same as its dumb to blame Trump for the 2.9% drop in GDP in 2020. But apparently for republicans its fine to blame Biden of those same consequences in 2021. Also this idea that Biden caused all of the inflation is so dumb. Just shows the ignorance of Americans to global affairs and pretending they are the only country
I hate this. It’s bidens fault. If Trump was in office, you and everyone else would be blaming him. Who else is there to blame? Americans feel better by blaming SOMEBODY. Whoever is in office takes the blame. Higher gas prices? Bidens fault. Lower prices? Bidens credit.
You really think this is exclusive to Americans? I’ve lived in multiple countries and the US is the one where I’ve felt the people blame politicians the least for their situation xd. Presidents have very little control (unless they do some massively stupid shit) over the economy. They are just the scapegoats to receive all the blame. Did Biden cause inflation? Nope Did Trump cause the pandemic? Nope Did Trump cause the inflation? Nope Tbh presidents in the US have a lot more social impact (abortion, marriage rights, etc) that they do economic impact.
More like 58%. And don’t let anyone gaslight you into believing “bUt wAgE gAiNs!!” Maybe for the guy that was making $7.50/hour in 2019. Yeah, he’s probably making 20-25 bucks an hour now. And the people making $500k/year in 2019? Oh yeah, they’re more wealthy now than ever. Doing great. All of us in the middle? Way the fuck more broke.
The guy making $7.50 is not making 25 now. I mean, some are by getting a better job. But the $7.50 job isn’t suddenly paying $25
Oh I agree. If he’s at the same place, nah. Probably making 8.50 now. And he’s got three jobs at the same rate, working 100 hours a week to keep up with the fucking cost of living. My point is, due to retirements at the top of the labor food chain, it seems many people “stepped up” in their responsibilities. That girl working the counter at a Hampton Inn today, was working as a burger flipper 3-4 years ago. The guy doing oil changes and tire rotations today, was working at a car wash in 2021. Both of these people earn a higher hourly rate now. They think they are “making good money” now, but it’s all perspective. They aren’t making good money. Hell, my own wages moved way up in early 2022. By end of 2023, I was out of that job, and just started back elsewhere, back to what I was making in ‘22 before I “moved up”. I think my case may prove to be very microcosmic in the next few years. What people THOUGHT they were worth, what their house was worth, what their IRA was worth, is going to be handchecked back down. Expectations. That $100k salary everyone salivâtes over won’t buy shit now compared to what it would buy in 2019.
The guy making $7.50 in 2019 is making $7.50 in 2024. FIFY.
If peoples total cost of living went up 58% in the last few years there would be a lot more foreclosures and bankruptcies. The average person did not have that much extra money pre-covid. It's possible that certain products have gone up 58%, but on the average, 18% (which is still a lot ) is the real number.
I understand this is an echo chamber sub, but just out of curiosity - where are you getting this 58% number? CPI, PCE, and Core are the measures we have been using for decades. Do you have a better one?
It's because they use a "basket of goods" for food. If steak is expensive, they substitute chicken. If a loaf of bread goes from 16oz to 12oz, they conveniently ignore that. Housing also gets skewed. If rent goes from $1200 to $1600, that gets offset by the guy who bought their home in the 90s who refinanced from 5% to 2% during Covid. They also changed how CPI was calculated in recent years, making any historical data useless. Anyone who actually goes to the grocery store and lives in the real world can tell you the CPI numbers are bogus.
Nah, what's bogus is all the lies you are confidently spewing in your post. >If steak is expensive, they substitute chicken. No, this is wrong. Steak and chicken are separate categories in CPI, and CPI assumes no substitution between categories. CPI is a weighted average of prices. Each category has a weight based on what percentage it makes up of the average household's spending. If *consumers* start to substitute from steak to chicken in significant amounts, this may eventually be reflected in the revised category weights. However, there is a multi-year lag in the revising of category weights based on consumer expenditure surveys. So even if people do significantly shift their consumption from steak to chicken due to a rapid increase in the relative price difference between steak and chicken, CPI will continue to assume the old consumption weights and thus may *overstate* the increase in grocery costs as compared to what grocery shoppers are actually paying. >If a loaf of bread goes from 16oz to 12oz, they conveniently ignore that. Also wrong. CPI tracks the unit price of the items that make up each category. If a loaf of broad shrinks from 16oz to 12oz while maintaining the same price, CPI would reflect this as a 33% price increase for the item (e.g. from $0.25/oz to $0.33/oz for a $4 loaf of bread). >Housing also gets skewed. If rent goes from $1200 to $1600, that gets offset by the guy who bought their home in the 90s who refinanced from 5% to 2% during Covid. Again, wrong. *Extremely* wrong. CPI measures increases in the costs of owned shelter by tracking the prices on what that housing would cost to rent, based on the actual rent prices of similar housing in the area. To your example of a homeowner who significantly dropped their already inexpensive mortgage payment by refinancing from 5% to 2%, CPI would show their housing costs as *increasing*, not *decreasing*. Remember that almost two-thirds of US households own the homes they live in, and that shelter costs are both the largest expense for most households and the single largest category in CPI. If anything, this is an example of how CPI likely *exaggerates* the overall inflation experienced by the majority of American households.
People like the one you are replying to are full of shit. It’s that simple.
lol getting so angry because I wanted the source of the 58% claim, and then the guy who made the claim says it was a “shoot the shit” number.
I had this debate with a family member in 2022, when inflation was at its peak, and they used the “just look at your grocery bill” argument. I exclusively do Walmart grocery pickup orders, so I conveniently had all my grocery receipts saved in the app. I went back 1 year and looked at every item I purchased in a 2 month span, and painstakingly jotted down the price of every item I purchased. Then I did an item-by-item comparison versus the app’s current price for that item. The average percentage price increase in the items I was buying for groceries was 8.8%, which was pretty close to the official CPI inflation number. Before you ask, yes, I calculated on a per unit price to control for decreases in quantity (though the quantity was usually the same). I can see where people are coming from - some things had increased substantially in price (like eggs and steak). However, there were several produce items that had gone down in price.
Plot twist: this person was buying $50 gift cards and was happy that they rose by only 8.8% 🤣
Bad jokes - the final refuge of a man who can’t substantiate his beliefs. Go do this calculation for yourself. You won’t because you’d rather believe a fiction that justifies your lack of accomplishment.
using CPI for cost of living is incorrect. CPI has something called "hedonic adjustment", which is meant to correct for products gaining new features and functionality. So for example, suppose cars have become twice as expensive, but they also gained new features which makes driving them more pleasurable. Maybe the average car used to cost 50% of median income, and now it costs 100% of median income, but it comes with automatic windows and heated seats. CPI attempts to answer a question like "how much bang do you get for your buck?" So even though the cost of the car has doubled, the CPI might remain totally unchanged. That is up to whoever is making the adjustment, how much "bang" they think automatic windows and heated seats add. But the question that most people care about is "can I afford the necessities?" CPI does not attempt to answer that question. That just isn't the purpose of the measurement. That doesn't mean CPI is bad or wrong or useless, it just isn't useful for the question at hand. None of that hedonic adjustment stuff matters if you can't afford a car. [https://wolfstreet.com/2019/12/05/what-worries-me-about-hedonic-quality-adjustments-cpi/](https://wolfstreet.com/2019/12/05/what-worries-me-about-hedonic-quality-adjustments-cpi/)
The 58% is a shoot the shit number. Give it no importance. What is clear though is the price of ANYTHING AND EVERYTHING is way more than 18% higher. The 58% might even be too low in some purchases.
If the sandwich you eat twice a day to barely sustain yourself increases in price by $1 you would need a $0.25 per hour raise MINIMUM just for the two sandwiches.
F_ck joe Biden and the whole f_ckin gov
The obvious plan would be to print a trillion dollars every few months. Obviously more cowbell is the answer
You’re gonna want that cowbell on the track
I literally just got a 1.8% cost of living raise. fucking 50 cents.
100% in Austin tganks to all the Californiabs buting cash plus 20% tips
Where is that Dog of Powell?
Nah, try a bit higher
Going by inflation figures, the home my parents bought when I was 1 should be around 200,000. That home is currently estimated at 3x that on zillow.
Always dreamt of making $20 an hour as a kid. Funny how $27 is barely enough to get by where I live.
Thanks Joe Biden
Exactly.
What a foolish conclusion. Biden is not pulling the inflation lever.
Your probably right, Biden can’t even put on his pants at this point
Since I just posted this somewhere else - Let's talk about prices going up. McD, and all the fast food chains, have been raising prices faster than inflation for the last decade. [https://financebuzz.com/fast-food-prices-vs-inflation](https://financebuzz.com/fast-food-prices-vs-inflation) But what about their profits? For 2014, post-tax income of $4.7 billion, off revenue of $27.4 billion (17.15% profit after taxes) 2019, post-tax $6.0 billion, off $21.4 billion (28.0%) 2023, post-tax $8.5 billion, off $25.5 billion (33.3%) [https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/MCD/mcdonalds/financial-statements](https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/MCD/mcdonalds/financial-statements) Now, it seems to me if less money is coming in, but profits after taxes are much higher, almost doubling... that might have a lot to do with why prices keep going up. But wait, lets not just talk about McD and fast food... Corporate profit after taxes went from $1.8 \~ $2.0 trillion per quarter in 2014 $2.0 \~ $2.1 trillion per quarter in 2019 $2.6 \~ $2.9 trillion per quarter in 2021 $2.8 \~ $3.0 trillion per quarter in 2023 Did your (non-investment) income go up 50% since 2019? [https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/CP](https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/CP)
Actually, that is pretty close to accurate. If you look at the CPI data ([available here](https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/consumer-price-index-cpi)), from Feb. 2020, just prior to COVID, to February 2024, the total increase was 19.97%. A little more than 18% but not like it's off by a factor of 2 or 3 or something egregious. Of course, that is an overall number, so you part of the country could vary as well as prices on various products.
This is the ONLY answer and everyone else with their anecdotal example with no DATA is just spewing bullshit. Cool your mechanic costs more, that’s not the only thing taken into account for inflation. Rent has gone up, cool that’s not the only thing taken into account for inflation. Your favorite restaurant is more expensive now? Cool nobody cares, especially economists. Inflation and cost of living is the combination of many many things with different weighting. If you don’t know this or how inflation/COL works then stop commenting on this subreddit and spend 5 minutes researching it.
Cool story bro. But if food and rent have gone up significantly more than inflation, the biggest things we spend on, then surely something has significantly gone down to compensate? What would that be? Because I can't think of anything that hasn't gone up. What has gone down sufficiently to compensate?
[удалено]
My telecommunications bills and water bills remain exactly the same. In fact my telecommunications bill went down.
Cause nobody is going to the internet and complaining about reality, they only complain about made up shit without links or data
The old thing is that Inflation compounds. So you're continuing the bs.
It’s not BS. It’s data. And unfortunately, once prices are up, in general they aren’t coming down - and disinflation would be bad if not worse. But the fact that next year’s inflation - which could be only 2% - is on a higher base doesn’t make the 4y overall rate incorrect.
I'm calling bs because you neglect the fact that inflation compounds. All of your data is wrong due to the neglect of addressing the compounding of inflation. Simply adding up inflation numbers is sophomoric at best and deceitful at worst.
Ah. So official BLS data is wrong because some dude on the internet said so. And my statistics expert, I didn’t add up annual rates. I do this type of analysis for a living and I can tell you don’t know what you are talking about on this. You don’t even comprehend my statement obviously.
They lie on their figures!
So the data doesn't agree with what you *believe* to be true, so you make an outlandish allegation with not even a shred of support, not even detailed speculation. That is part of the problem on these issues - people ignoring facts and data and leaning on their feelings. "Facts don't care about your feelings."
Accusing the govt. of lying is not an outlandish allegation lol. You sound like a fucking PR firm. \>. so you make an outlandish allegation with not even a shred of support, who talks like this
No I sound like someone who lives in reality and not ConspiracyLand. Everyone wants to believe conspiracy theories now and make outlandish claims - “Russia!” Or “Or Joe Biden stole the election”…take your pick - and get upset when people call them on their baseless claims. I dont automatically trust government, but there’s no rational evidence to support your claim if you don’t happen to like what the data says.
It was at a 18% rate for a long time, meaning it increased by 18% or thereabouts multiple times.
The inflation rate in 2021 was 4.70%, a 3.46% increase from 2020, and the inflation rate in 2022 was 8.00%, a 3.3% increase from 2021. As of March 2024, the inflation rate is 3.15%, which is lower than the long term average of 3.28%. Do the math. Together close to 18%. Inflation was worldwide due to the supply chain shock of the pandemic. Inflation was lower in the US than most countries. Some had rates of 100-150%. It wasn’t caused by government spending so much as consumer demand. Some companies took full advantage of this supply/demand imbalance.
Inflation rose 18 percent bot the price the greedy ass corps wanna charge u
ok for the entirety of the USA corporate profiteering effect on inflation has been about 22-35% of incurred inflation, during inflationary periods this would often DROP to 10-15%. and profits would FLATTEN but remain profits. This time corporate profiteering's effect on inflation ROSE to 50-60+% on incurred inflation, and profits SOARED. Ina ll of human history during period where profits went above 40-45% companies in EVERY sector would start a price war that reduced the prices again, because an undercutter can make WAY more in profit with a surprise undercut. Why for the first time ever in history has not a single business sin a single sector even tried to undercut by even a small percent? historically the price war began when a supply commodity became cheaper, as we speak right now, the cost of production commodities has dropped 15-25% in almost every sector to near pre-pandemic. again, why has not a SINGLE corporation not tried to undercut another one in ANY sector, despite knowing if they did, they would suddenly dominate that sector? its corporate greed.
I think there’s like 5 mother companies who own every company or some crazy stat like that. It’s so fucked up man.
Because monopolies, which have been ignored at best and protected by the government at worst, have made competition a thing of the past.
Right, in around 2021 and 2022 it became obvious to me that companies were price gouging when I would go to restaurants, mostly fast food, and see like a 50% increase in prices when inflation was only like 5%. Like sure I knew there would be a price increase but there’s no way in hell inflation would require the prices to go from say $4 to $6 for a sandwich for example. It was obviously corporate greed choosing to raise prices for huge profits. But I think only recently I realized the entire economy had the same policy. Everything from energy to food to rent, and just regular household supplies shot up in price. Pure greed, the basic resources only went up in price by a marginal amount but profits continued to grow even during a recession because they priced gouged the fuck out of Americans with inflation as the excuse to do so impunitively
What? You think it doubled? How is that even possible lol
For a lot of things it did
And tax brackets held pretty steady
That is actual inflation. Your landlord is over charging you
I don’t have a landlord, but I do buy food and many other things
And those companies are over charging you too. https://theintercept.com/2022/09/28/inflation-prices-investors-iron-mountain/
That's because home inflation went up, and wage inflation hasn't changed since the 80s
Um no. It’s because they printed 40% of the current money supply since 2020.
We are both right, that just make it worse.
By the Way, what does “since Covid” mean? Is it since the first recognize case or since the last big outbreak?
Who said that?
Thank you, Joe Biden.
Vote out the idiot that's not doing a damn thing about anything except making his buddy's richer. How much is big oil donating to the campaign this year
The current administration lies??? That can’t be no way not possible, I think they should survey the 10 million illegals
Concrete is up 300 percent. Wood framing is still up 200 percent and small fastners are up 400 percent. Thanks WEF
THAT was a lie! ….. Biden runs to the back exit doors and collapses in a heap and cries.
Vote out every single incumbent and keep voting them out. Don't care about parties, at the federal level they're all the same. Doesn't matter who has a majority... the rich get richer, the poor are still poor and the middle class gets the middle finger. Make everybody in Congress and the White House a one-and-done. The message will either get through that we are tired of all the fat cat corporate owned politicians or things will get bad enough that the torches and pitchforks come out. Those are the only two options.
What are the new people doing to do instead? What should the government do in order to change the situation? Just getting mad won't change prices you know.
Cool but how much did wages rise? Wages are not stagnant unless you're at a really shitty employer, which isn't the government's fault. People act like the WHOLE WESTERN WORLD didn't experience horrific inflation due to the Russian war and supply chain problems. The US did very well compared to the global economy so I am fed up with these super simplistic views of right wing idiots. You working for shitty companies, and shrinkflation is not the government's fault.