2y ago

Inflation rose just 0.2% in June, less than expected as consumers get a break from price increases

www.cnbc.com

Inflation fell to its lowest annual rate in more than two years during June, the product both of some deceleration in costs and easy comparisons against a time when price increases were running at a more than 40-year high.

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Corpos are slowing down the gouging..
- There's a term for that: greedflation. When a company raises their prices to improve their margins then blames the increase on inflation.
- They tend to do that when people stop buying all the stupid extra shit.
- Nah I bet the government economists just found a trick to make the numbers look smaller.
- Inflation generally begins with suppliers, so unless you consider truckers, farmers, miners, etc "corpos" your take is way off base.
  Today's inflation is a direct result of the pandemic, exacerbated through savings/loose credit/"free" money as a result of not being able to spend during the pandemic. Demand didn't disappear, it just got built up. Meanwhile, manufacturers, shippers, and receivers literally couldn't get staff, and their costs rose. This carried all the way down the chain
  The common retort here is the "record profits" line, but like... Yeah. Demand built up for TWO YEARS. Everyone and their mom is hiring. Of course they're seeing record profits.
  Gouging has nothing to do with it. Unless you're talking about crude oil prices then yeah it's a lot of gouging, lol. Monopoly on supply and all that. But again, those costs trickle out through the entire economy.
  
  My salary didn't increase enough to match inflation but the amount we charge our customers at my job did. Oh and my clients are all government or large manufacturing outfits. Not like malls or something.
  Nothing to see here, right?
  
  Gouging is roughly half of the reason for the hough inflation. Even industries that saw no shortages raised their prices because they saw they could because people expected higher prices. There have been a few econ papers written on the subject. Initially the additional profit margins were not looked at much because generally that is not the cause of inflation. But it can be. The last time it was a significant source of inflation was after WWII when people expected higher prices because factories had to completely switch what they were producing back to commercial good.
  
  Uh, yes to all 3.
  Only 9% of truckers are owner operators. 91% work for companies, the vast majority of which work for large companies like SWIFT, or major retailers like Walmart.
  The vast majority of miners work for large corporations too.
  A majority of farmland is owned by mid-large sized corps too.
  So truckers, farmers, and miners themselves might not be corpos, but they’re labor for a capitalist just like most everyone else. And those capitalist owners are looking to extract the maximum profit possible.
  
  Not to mention, "record profits" is exactly what you would expect in absolute numbers in an inflationary environment. If all of a company's costs double, and they subsequently double all prices, then they'll get "record profits", despite nothing meaningful having changed.
  Individual workers are also making "record" amounts of income, but again, that number in isolation isn't meaningful at all. I have significantly more dollars than a 1700s NYC landlord. I'd still much rather have his relative financial situation.

most of my costs have been flat or going down the past six months. a lot of consumer goods that I buy are seeing massive price cuts due to overstock and plummeting demand after two years of being at or above MSRP.
Things that are still increasing are service industry stuff. Restaurants, haircuts, travel, etc all seem to be going up. I have basically given most of that stuff up because there I see no reason to spend $50 on a haircut, or a hamburger and a two beers. When I flew in 2020 a ticket was like $400, that same flight today is like $1200.
local vacation rentals also seem to be plummeting in cost thank to massive vacancies because people can travel internationally again. I've also started to see cars prices go for MSRP or mild discounts in my area after two years of them being 20% over MSRP. I'm looking to replace my 7 year old car in the next year or two, and most models of it are already seeing $1000-2000 discounts, I'm hoping by winter that will go up to $3000-4000.

In which country?
- They are talking about the USA.
  
  "Turkey_titty_city" as the name leaves open some options lol
- I think they are talking about the US, but it isn't 100% clear.

Dont forget they have changed the way this is calculated two times in the last 2 years this is now completely bullshit.
- That’s not true, nor would a marginal adjustment in how each item is weighted change the final number significantly. We’re talking about a few basis points. Numbers below the significant figures on the headlines.
  When do they change the weighting they do it to more accurately reflect consumer spending, because consumer spending changes quite a bit from time to time.
  The line about CPI being manipulated is repeated over and over, without sourcing, on the internet, every time inflation numbers are released.
  Internet doomers aren’t smarter than the highly qualified statistics experts at BLS.
  It should also be noted that the items in this report with the highest level inflation are outliers, and are discretionary items such as air travel, hotels, luxury items, and home improvement materials. So if anything the inflation rate is lower for essentials focused spending, middle and lower class families who are paying rent, basic utilities, and simply trying to put food on the table.
  
  It's been changed 7 times since 78
  Most recently these were the changes, very well documented. Nothing sounds suspicious
  Changes to the CPI establishment frame (2019-2020) Replaced Telephone Point-of-Purchase Survey (TPOPS) as source of retail establishment frame with data from the Consumer Expenditure Surveys (CE) Eliminated redundancies and inefficiencies in survey operations and reduced household burden Use of Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages business registry to refine the location and address data from the CE For more on the history of the CPI and price change in the U.S see
  https://www.bls.gov/cpi/additional-resources/historical-changes.htm
  
  Home improvement materials are discretionary? Tell me exactly what items that includes. It better be something like a gazebo but I bet it's stuff like hot water heaters and window glass.
- Source?
  Are you talking about CPI and PPI?

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