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Economy => Economics => Topic started by: Hydrogen on October 05, 2017, 09:55:06 PM



Title: Be Careful What You Wish For: Inflation Is Much Higher Than Advertised
Post by: Hydrogen on October 05, 2017, 09:55:06 PM
Quote
What the Federal Reserve is actually whining about is not low inflation - it's that high inflation isn't pushing wages higher like it's supposed to.

It's not exactly a secret that real-world inflation is a lot higher than the official rates--the Consumer Price Index (CPI) and Personal Consumption Expenditures PCE). As many observers have pointed out, there are two primary flaws in the official measures of inflation:

1. Big-ticket expenses such as rent, healthcare and higher education--expenses that run into the thousands or tens of thousands of dollars annually--are severely underweighted or mis-reported. While rents are soared, the CPI uses an arcane (and misleading) measure of housing costs: owners equivalent rent. Why not just measure actual rents paid and actual mortgages/property taxes/home insurance premiums paid?

http://www.oftwominds.com/photos2017/CPI10-17.png

Healthcare is 18% of GDP but only 8.5% of CPI. To those exposed to actual costs of healthcare, 8.5% of the CPI is a joke.

The same can be said of higher education: households paying tuition and other college costs are exposed to horrendously high rates of inflation, as illustrated in this chart:

http://www.oftwominds.com/photos2017/inflation10-16.jpg

Revealing the Real Rate of Inflation Would Crash the System (August 3, 2016) (http://www.oftwominds.com/blogaug16/inflation-crash8-16.html)

The Burrito Index: Consumer Prices Have Soared 160% Since 2001 (August 1, 2016) (http://www.oftwominds.com/blogaug16/burrito-index8-16.html)

Inflation Isn't Evenly Distributed: The Protected Are Fine, the Unprotected Are Impoverished Debt-Serfs (May 25, 2017) (http://www.oftwominds.com/blogmay17/protected-inflation5-17.html)

Then there's the hedonic adjustments that are made to reflect improvements in quality, features, safety, etc. So the price of computers is discounted to reflect the increase in memory, etc. compared to previous models. This is a can of worms, as anyone shopping for a new car or truck can attest: yes, the vehicles have more safety features, but the sticker price is much higher. Do we knock off $10,000 the "price" because of these additional features? Why should we, when consumers have to pony up $10,000 more than they did a decade ago?

More honest and accurate estimates of real-world inflation that include the big-ticket categories of housing, healthcare and higher education reckon annual inflation is around 7% or even as high as 10% in high-cost metro areas, not 2%. This sets up a very peculiar cognitive dissonance in the financial media.

On the one hand, government agencies are bending over backward to under-report inflation. On the other, the Federal Reserve is whining that inflation is too low and their efforts to push it higher have failed. Heck, folks, the solution is obvious: just report real-world inflation without the hedonic adjustments and other shuck and jive, and when the rate of inflation comes in at a hot 7% instead of the official 2%, the Federal Reserve can declare victory.

Why does the Fed want higher inflation? The general explanation is higher inflation benefits bankers, borrowers and the expansion of credit that underpins our consumerist economy.

The idea is that as wages rise with inflation (assuming wages are rising, which they're not for the bottom 90%), households will have an easier time servicing existing debt and getting new loans.

The payments due on existing debt become easier to make as inflation expands everyone's paychecks. (Note that this expansion doesn't mean the purchasing power of the wage has increased; it's an illusory expansion that serves the credit industry.)

Banks benefit because they earn fees on originating new loans and rolling over existing debts into new loans.

But the supposed benefits of high inflation are undercut if wages don't rise as fast as prices. As many observers have noted, wages for the bottom 90% have not kept pace with higher costs. For the bottom 90%, rising rents, higher property taxes, higher health insurance premiums, higher healthcare co-pays and deductibles, soaring college tuition and so on, have squeezed household budgets while household income has stagnated.

No wonder the government wants to mask the real rate of inflation. If it was widely understood that inflation is reducing our purchasing power at an annual rate of 7% while wages are rising at 1% or 2% if at all, people might realize the Fed and other authorities have stripmined the many to enrich the few.

http://www.oftwominds.com/photos2017/income-real-quintile7-17b.png

So what the Federal Reserve is actually whining about is not low inflation--it's that high inflation isn't pushing wages higher like it's supposed to. In the simplistic models of conventional economics, inflation is supposed to be a monetary function, i.e. a generalized secular dynamic that pushes everything higher--not just prices, but wages, too.

Alas, the world isn't as simple as the economists' models. So what we have instead is stagnating wages and soaring wealth-income inequality.

http://www.oftwominds.com/photos2017/inequality-NYT8-17a.png

No wonder so many people reckon this was the real plan all along: it's worked brilliantly for the eight years of "recovery", greatly enriching the few at the expense of the many.

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-10-05/be-careful-what-you-wish-inflation-much-higher-advertised

Interesting read for sure.

Awhile ago we were discussing saving versus investing. The general consensus was investing is superior to saving due to real inflation being closer to 10% than the officially cited figure of 3%. High inflation having a side effect of eliminating gains acquired from low interest yields on savings accounts makes saving difficult in this day and age.

This piece goes into some of the surrounding details involving motivation for high inflation as a means of wealth redistribution.


Title: Re: Be Careful What You Wish For: Inflation Is Much Higher Than Advertised
Post by: centralbanksequalsbombs on October 08, 2017, 12:22:25 AM
Wow, excellent stuff. Thank you for sharing Hydrogen. Visuals help immensely.

Taking this one step further, if you were to globally-weight inflation of all the global fiat currency in the world from all the central banks, I'd wager, on balance the annual rate of pumped fiat growth would be around 13% to 23% annually!


Title: Re: Be Careful What You Wish For: Inflation Is Much Higher Than Advertised
Post by: creatormultiply on October 08, 2017, 12:42:36 AM
Of course this is the game that we unconsciously play everyday.
Cryptocurrency is our way to break free.
In regards to my other thread :
Will fiat currency collapse soon?


Title: Re: Be Careful What You Wish For: Inflation Is Much Higher Than Advertised
Post by: davis196 on October 08, 2017, 06:24:12 AM
The future is not good for the woung people today.
The golden age of capitalism is in the past and we will suffer more poverty and inequality.
The bad news is that cryprocurrencies are too far away from providing a working solution for those issues.
The world bankster elite want`s more and more debts for the people.They want more slaves.


Title: Re: Be Careful What You Wish For: Inflation Is Much Higher Than Advertised
Post by: centralbanksequalsbombs on October 08, 2017, 05:16:43 PM
The future is not good for the woung people today.
The golden age of capitalism is in the past and we will suffer more poverty and inequality.
The bad news is that cryprocurrencies are too far away from providing a working solution for those issues.
The world bankster elite want`s more and more debts for the people.They want more slaves.

=(


Title: Re: Be Careful What You Wish For: Inflation Is Much Higher Than Advertised
Post by: centralbanksequalsbombs on October 23, 2017, 12:01:46 AM
Could bitcoin be the equalizing factor against the systemic establishment fueling financial inequality?


Title: Re: Be Careful What You Wish For: Inflation Is Much Higher Than Advertised
Post by: HabBear on October 23, 2017, 02:58:34 AM
The new cars number has to be wrong. There's no way in hell that there's been no price inflation on new cars. New car prices are at a very swift inflation trend. You know what makes that happen? The increased reliance on lending enables prices to be increased, especially the predatory lending where they try to loan you money to the capacity of your monthly payment rather than the total dollar amount of the purchase.