https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29175110
I think it's important to clear this up because people say things like "high inflation of over 5-6% for months now" which is kind of misleading. Prices can go up 6% just once and then stay the same and you'll still report 6% inflation every month throughout the following year.
This isn't to say that things are great and high inflation isn't happening. The month-to-month increase is 0.9% which is very high (see the graph).
But notice that, following your indication, monthly increase is a steady >0.2% and mostly >0.4% since May 2020, way above average.
So, yes: high inflation has been going on for at least a year.
Most of the most prosperous periods in American history are following large shifts in the world order, WW1 and 2, collapse of the USSR, starting the Age of Information, etc.
Meaningless crap, designed to support government narrative that everything is great, nothing to see here.
To have any credibility at all, inflation MUST include rent/mortgage payments and house prices.
(food and beverages, housing, apparel, transportation, medical care, recreation, education and communication, and other goods and services)
Question 10. https://www.bls.gov/cpi/questions-and-answers.htm
https://www.whitehouse.gov/cea/blog/2021/09/09/housing-price...
You can bet every HN thread about inflation will be full of bad info from cranks.
RPI takes into account housing costs such as mortgage interest payments, building insurance etc. I'm not sure what USA measure, but the UK shifted to CPI in 2003 to harmonise with EU.
So no, UK/EU/CPI inflation measures basically don't include housing related costs. Certainly not the price of houses, which might be the thrust of OPs point.
Unfortunately, it's taxation that makes the weakest suffer the most.
Oh, and the govt would like you to believe they have a way to control it.
Yeah sure, I'm going to turn that knob that is one input of a perfectly chaotic system, and I know what is going to happen.
Let's see how that empty promise actually turns out.
And you can see this historically, too:
Historical inflation rate chart: http://www.aboutinflation.com/_/rsrc/1369736825466/inflation...
Wealth gap inequality: https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2F...
You can literally see how the wealth gap inequality nose dives in the high-inflation environment of the 70s and then continually increases after low-inflation rates become the norm for decades after around 1982.
Inflation is a tax, should be seen as such but is a tax on the rich in cash (I keep insisting on the term cash because that's what inflation taxes, if you are rich in other assets inflation may or may not result in an effective taxation of your wealth). Monetary and fiscal policy should be designed with this in mind.
a) your charts are a classical example of "try hard enough and you will find 2 charts that correlate"
b) Inflation affects the poor because they don't, and sometimes can't, hold assets that traditionally protects the rich from inflation, such as real hard assets (such as real estate) and a sizeable chunk of stocks (some types) and bonds (TIPS and short duration). The poor lives paycheck to paycheck and see their income staying the same while everything else around them is increasing in price.
Not at all: people with low incomes struggle the most to get raises.
And those who barely get to the end of the month struggle the most when their purchase power decreases by 5%.
> On the contrary, it's a tax on people that have a lot of cash or cash-equivalent assets.
No, wealthy people tend to invest theirs saving in various things that resist or often even beat inflation.
In a numerical sense the rich may suffer more but they won't eat a sandwich less because of it, whereas poor people may end up much poorer and the middle class (aka the comfortably poor) are significantly impacted.
Inflation is the most regressive tax possible on the poor.
If there was a scale of value in terms of being between the borrower (people in debt) and people lending (people with cash). It swings heavily in favour of people in debt.
- poor people have less money to repay interest on the debt after buying necessities at an inflated price
- interest rates rise following inflation which will increase debt repayment costs and likely offset any benefits gained from debt being inflated away
- it is very rare for 'people' to actually issue loans, I imagine 99.99% of loans are issued by banks
The rich seem to be asset heavy so are buffeted against inflation.
