Just need to vent...

I remember a conversation along those lines with a family member a dozen or so years ago (would have put it in the middle of that long slowish recovery from the 2008 collapse). I had been looking at 'official' inflation numbers that had been in the low single-digit percent ballpark in those years, and she had been following other sources that said those were being faked and the true inflation rate was in the teens. She insisted that if I just did the math on some of my own grocery bills I would see how fake the official numbers were.

So I did ... I dug out some grocery receipts back to 2007 and my recent ones, and did the math, and came out with inflation rates in the low single digits.

I concluded that the same people faking the official inflation figures had also been coming into my house and replacing my more recent grocery receipts with smaller ones to make them match the fake inflation figures.

But it was worse: they had also been finagling my credit union balances so it seemed I had only spent what the faked receipts showed I had. And all of that seemed very creepy. But I ultimately decided if they were going to work that hard to make my receipts and my account balances match the fake figures, and I was still able to use my faked account balances like real money and buy stuff, I might as well just play along.

 

The Federal Reserve is fed up with data revisions | CNN Business
Figures don't lie...but liars do figure.

Poor people and minorities spend a disproportionate amount of their real earnings on food and energy.
They're also disproportionately represented in the part time as opposed to full time, benefited labour market.
Since these people are not able to take a “data-dependent approach" I guess we'll have to rely on anecdotal evidence like anonymous grocery receipts.
OR?
Maybe use data that's been harvested and processed by dot.gov.


Source: Food Inflation in the United States (1968-2024)
(NOTE: single source - not vetted but they claim to use BLS (or maybe BS!) data.
If these data are close to accurate then my grub has gone up by over 20% over the last 4 years.
My income has not - although I'm not supporting the current "strong labor numbers" by working two part-time jobs...


FORTUNATELY there are some midwestern states that do not add insult to injury by taxing people for food.
My beloved home state of Indiana is one of these......


Either way, I would not recommend the 'don't trust your lying eyes' strategy for the current regime.

It's not working.

 

To my disgust, my daughter traded in her Mazda CX-5 for a Hyundai Palisade and this is our families first Kia/Hyundai vehicle so I've wondered about it's reliability.
A few days ago, I was driving into work and got behind an old Kia at the stop light....looked about 12-15 years old. So that's a good sign for long-term reliability, right? Well, the light turned green and she accelerated, covered everyone behind her in a HUGE cloud of white/blue smoke!
Well that's not good!!

 

Actually, the Koreans have been punching above their weight with cars lately.
Think: Japan in about the mid 80's. As a matter of fact they refer to the Japanese as 'The Lazy Asians..."
Evidently, I'm not alone.
https://www.cars.com/articles/2023-j-d-power-u-s-tech
Heck - they've even caused the Junior High dropouts over at Car & Driver to stop worshiping German and Japanese cars - at least overtly.
I'd buy a Hyundai before I'd buy a Toyota any day of the week and twice on Sunday - but like the Koreans I have my own biases against Toyota, albeit with the company - NOT the nation.

Kia has the quality but their design team seems to be made up from former Toyota employees who failed multiple drug tests and failed out of rehab.

 

Don't discount Chinese quality either. It has really grown Leaps and Bounds. The experts estimate within 5 years - a certain Chinese manufacturer will kick Toyota off the #1 largest manufacturer platform. It's too bad Toyota didn't see the EV writing on the wall several years ago. That certain chinese manufacturer is selling 100's of thousands of ev's world wide e/ month & have world domination on their mind. Just think if Toyo had bought into more Tesla ownership rather than selling it, & than buying into subaru.
.

 

Oh I don't!

When you don't have to pay for R&D and you can employ 1890's US Labour practices it REALLY cuts down on the cost to manufacture!

Unfortunately their military is also growing by leaps and bounds in both quantity AND quality!
Fortunately for freedom lovers across the globe, the ChiComms only have peaceful, regional interests at present.
Sorta like Germany's Wehrmacht in.....oh? about 1935.

 

An admirably clear statement of a way to acceptance-test the data, if you've got the records on hand to do so,

Your grocery receipts are anonymous to me. My grocery receipts are anonymous to you. Nobody's grocery receipts substitute for methodically collected aggregate data.

But everybody's own grocery receipts are important arrows in his or her own quiver for the purpose of sanity-checking different, possibly conflicting, claims being heard from different sources, as part of the work of deciding which ones are worth repeating.

I don't know if my grub has gone up 20% ... maybe it has. The time I sat down with receipts and did the math, mentioned in my post above, was during the post-2008 recovery. I haven't repeated the exercise lately.

My informal sense from around here, just from going out and about and doing double-takes, is that restaurant prices have gone up dramatically—enough that eating out appeals very little to me now—while grub I buy at the store hasn't gone up as much.

 

As they say…. ‘Actual Mileage Will Vary’
My CFO has monthly receipts going back thirty years with many of these actually containing enough information about the products being purchased to quantify the item purchased.
Coffee for example used to be sold in 16 oz quantities but are now more commonly found in 12oz containers.

I believe the current regime has mentioned shrinkflation before….

Since I’m on the end of a 5-year contract I know exactly how much my pay has increased over the last 5 years. 9.6992% or 1.93% per year.

As discussed earlier items like food and energy are not included in “core” inflation - and with good reason!
U.S. Regular All Formulations Retail Gasoline Prices (Dollars per Gallon)
My 1.93% contractual windfall is also offset by a near doubling of my healthcare plan premiums, a more than 2% raise in insurance (home and auto) utilities and durable goods.

Given the ‘below the fold, not yet revised’ BLS data I guess I should just consider myself blessed to still have a full time job with benefits.
That might change in August….in which case I will get to bulk up the 1Q25 BLS statistics by taking two part time jobs…

MY mileage.
YMMV.

 

Just a small correction. You should compute the annual increase assuming compound interest. So instead of dividing by 5, compute (1.096992)^(1/5) = 1.08618 or 1.8618%

JeffD

 

lol....
Noted.
The quote "Compound interest is the eighth wonder of the world. He who understands it, earns it. He who doesn't, pays it," is often attributed to Albert Einstein

Actually what I did was to take the overall delta from my 2019 pay, to my current pay, expressed as a percentage over the 5 year term.
(There's a LOT of people doing that!) - so the annual percentage average is just that.
A simple average.
If they can lie with numbers, so can I 'eh?
My 9.6992% bonanza wasn't evenly distributed over the five years, since a common pacification tactic is to express the pay raise as the total amount over the 5-year term (OVER 9-1/2 PERCENT!!) with over a third being issued in the first year - so I might have actually gained a particle of a percentage over the 'pre-adjusted core inflation' numbers....if I didn't have to buy fuel or energy in 2019-2020.
We do not have a COLA so my overall 'net' was actually a fairly significant drop over the last 5 years - since even 'pre-adjusted core inflation' was over 2% per year.

 

If your increases were not uniformly distributed over the 5 years, the correct analysis is a "Net Present Value" which calculates the average discount percentage, but that requires a computer program to do correctly and careful data entry. Note that I am just an Electrical Engineer, not an accountant.

JeffD

 

I do the grocery shopping for our family.
I readily admit to being a penny pincher/cheapskate/ Coupon saver etc.
My current savings for year to date at the grocery store is $705. Ytd savings is tracked on your receipts and shown each time you shop.
I am keenly aware of grocery cost prices and shrinkflation.
Based on my weekly grocery shopping experiences over the last decade I can promise you that - yes- the price of food has skyrocketed the past few years.

Our solutions have been - a very robust Victory Garden, 5 dwarf apple trees, peach tree, dwarf cherry tree, raspberry, blackberry bush and blueberry bush plantings in the yard. Our garden now includes about 20 strawberry plants, a perirenal asparagus section, a New Zealand perirenal 'spinach'(so vigorous it could be labeled invasive) as well as many other southern staples such as beans, corn, okra, peppers, potatoes, tomatoes, carrots etc.. Also a small freezer to store all the surplus for winter consumption. Unfortunately fruits and vegetables don't ripen as you need them and harvest is a feast and then famine situation. Nothing like 10 to 15 - 5 to 10 pound watermelons coming ripe at the same time. We end up in those situations giving some to neighbors and family.

 

It’s world wide inflation, after covid. But if you bought a house in 60’s- 70’s, in the best areas of (everyone is moving out of), the state of Calif., you and your multimillion house, with almost no property taxes, vaccinates against inflation. I never could understand if everyone is moving out why $20,000 homes in the 60’s- 70’s are now worth a fortune with buyers fighting to get one.

 

The California conundrum: Fewer people, more homes, but an acute housing shortage (msn.com)
"Experts interviewed by The Times said home prices and rents haven't plunged for several interconnected reasons. But in general, it's because for decades — even in years of slow population growth — California hasn't added enough housing to meet demand, creating a backlog so large that it can't be corrected by a few years of population loss."

 

Construction trends in America:

Businesses build what they want.

Housing developers build what they can, after running the gauntlet of zoning boards and planning committees.

Result: Areas with good economic development (read: job opportunities) are starved for housing.

 

I hate seeing nice Toyota's neglected and abused.

I have a 2023 Toyota Camry rental car from Avis Rental Car and she has 30,000 miles and NO oil maintenance reminder sticker on the windshield, so I popped the hood to check her out before driving off.

Big mistake...the oil on the dipstick is VERY black and even pretty thick, but it is full.... somebody probably just topped it off.. The coolant reservoir is quite a few inches below the min mark so I opened the radiator cap and, thankfully, it's full but the reddish/pinkish color expected is getting darker.

Driving around, the transmission seems a little jerky when shifting gears.

So, obviously, this beautiful car could use some maintenance, and THIS is the reason for a person to NEVER EVER purchase a vehicle that's been a Fleet vehicle.

This thing will start burning oil and probably need a head gasket very soon...probably already starting to get some coolant into the engine now.

If I were home I'd go ahead and do an oil change on her because this just isn't right.

 

Just changed my oil Saturday night. Didn't feel quite fair as I'd just changed it three weeks ago. Before that road trip. But the odometer don't lie....

 

“Hasn’t added enough housing” sounds like a political non answer

 

Left out Calif, it is not a mid western state and doesn’t tax food. Remember, inflation has been world wide. Ignoring that doesn’t change it.