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The American economy is three pyramid schemes in a trench coat
2.7% for the rich, they don’t care what the serfs eat
Brazil is the largest exporter of meat and Trump is tariffing them 50%
so, more than 2.7% in that category. almost like that claimed 2.7% is an intentionally misleading choice of “measure” of central tendency.
Sure, and less than 2.7% in other categories. That’s how averages work…
if i alert someone of the possibility of earning either 0 or 100 dollars at a coinflip by saying “the average payout is 50 dollars,” while ive said something true, ive also said something misleading. a reasonable person might say, “0, but you said i could earn 50!” and would you expect them to be mollified by me saying, “no no no, its actually only the average is 50. i was clear about this up front.” its like a student turning in their math homework and they didnt simplify the expression at the end, complaining about the teacher insisting you have to do all the work to earn full credit.
It takes so much into account that it becomes almost meaningless for the average person.
So some people will get it all, some nothing, but the average person might struggle with it?
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/CUSR0000SAF112
Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers: Meats, Poultry, Fish, and Eggs in U.S. City Average (Seasonally Adjusted)
Entire Time Series (1967+) Normalized to '82-'84 =100:
Last 5 Years (2020+), Renormalized to 100 = Jan 2020:
So, yeah, thats about 35% increase in 5 years, if you specifically look at the Meat Poultry Fish Eggs component of the CPI.
The CPI numbers, the, ‘2.5%’ inflation number… thats
month to monththe last 12 months, annualized, like an APR, … and they are a weighted basket of many, many different subcomponents such as this.Sort of analagous to how a say, 10% APR… well, thats annualized, so to get the monthly interest rate, you roughly divide by 12… but technically it is more complicated, because that monthly interest rate is actually compounding every month over month.
So the acutal monthly rate is:
MPR = [ ( 1 + APR ) ^ ( 1 / 12 ) ] - 1
If you treat an ~35% increase over almost 5 years with this kind of math, then you end up with an average, effective monthly inflation rate for meat and eggs of:
6.642%, since Jan 2020.EDIT: I fucked up the math, goddamned javascript based web calculator on shitty mobile phone,.here’s something more accurate:
4.984%, since July 2020.
(I’m basically just doing napkin math here, picking specifically July 2020 just because its the 5Y window, normally you’d use a longer period of stability to base this off of, but hopefully ya’ll get the idea)
Also worth noting, the latest August numbers are of course backward looking, in time. So, if these price pics in the OP image are literally from today… they may not be reflected in the numbers untill next month.
… Assuming Trump has not destroyed the BLS/FRED by then, who fucking knows.
…
Why doesn’t this line up with broader inflation?
Well, lots of reasons, I’m going to pick probably the biggest one, as opposed to writing an entire PhD level dissertation…
The CPI, the big headline number… is based on an average basket of goods and services that, ie, a weighted index, and uh… that basket, those weights, represent the average, the mean… not the median.
Here’s 2022.
Yep thats a household that makes $94k before taxes, $83k after taxes.
In 2022, the US Median after tax household income was… $64k.
So, the entire basket, and thus CPI, is thus weighted toward the spending patterns of people about 1 standard deviation higher than the median household income.
Rich people do not have the same spending basket as poorer people, poorer people disproportionally spend a lot more of their income on food, rent/mortgage, gas / car expenses…
… And as wealth disparity, and wealth transfer to the elites gets worse and worse, the reported CPI thus underreports actual inflation for more and more people.
…
Hope all these fun numbers help explain some things.
…
EDIT 2:
Without having to doing a bunch of math yourself…
Probably look at the CPI-U series and components instead of the broader CPI… as the U refers to Urban, and something like 80% of Americans live in what is considered an Urban area.
So looking at the CPI-U is probably a relatively easy way to get a somewhay more realistic look at price levels that actual people pay… but the flipside is that the wealthy disparity is even more lopsided in Urban areas… uh, good luck, lol.
…
The financial news and media still focus on the broader CPI… basically because of outdated tradition.
Much like how they almost never pay attention the BLS employment number revisions… unless they are very very bad.
You don’t need to be very smart to have money, basically just lucky. Or ruthless.
…
EDIT 3
Ok, using the actual numbers from OP Image… maybe this can demonsrate the power of compound interest.
Thats a 1y difference of +45.496%, in $/lb of beef.
All it takes to get that, in one year…
Is an average, compounding, 3.1742% price increase every month, for 12 months.
Exponential equations run away fast, and human brains tend to default to thinking of linear relationships… not exponential… and thats why credit card companies make so much money, lol.
Anyway, yeah, check this CPI U meat/eggs subcomponent next month to see august price levels, and if they do a massive jump, or if data is now considered a woke diversity hire and now banned shrug
This was a great read. Thanks for taking the time to post this.
I’m just chiming in to say, yeah, the logic of this is directly in line with the statistics, and economics that I learned in college. I drifted away from it and I haven’t run the numbers myself, but I have no reason to doubt the calculations.
I agree with you, and I’m hoping that will reinforce to others that this is far more complex than most people can comprehend. It’s certainly more complex than what the Whitehouse economists seem to understand… Regardless, I think you said it perfectly with “exponential equations run away fast”, and I think that might even be understating it; especially that the average person doesn’t “get” how quickly compound rates can increase the costs of things over time.
I understand that they have to set limits for themselves or they’ll be doing calculations all year and never get enough done to have the whole picture. What they are working from is certainly not the whole picture. Regardless, the math doesn’t lie.
If things keep up like this, I think that in less than one quarter, we’ll see the numbers skyrocket.
I appreciate the reinforcement that I am not insane, genuienly.
Struggled with impostor syndrome for a loooong time, and uh… welp, yeah, turns out I spent roughly 2 decades being a lot more right than wrong (not just specifically on this), and everyone else actually either had no clue what they were talking about, or massive unexamind normalcy bias, ignorant of the concept of a state change, a phase transition.
… So as the world now burns, I at least find a modicum of horrendous solace in knowing that I was at least not overreacting… though I obviously wish more people had listened to me and taken me seriously, at least … I tried … thus my conscious is clear.
You’re leaving out the substitution principle.
If a can of Spam becomes cheaper than actual meat then the CPI will substitute them as “equal”. Cheese Wiz is just as “cheese” as stuff that comes out of a cow.
CPI is nothing but a gamed statistic. It’s fake. Even then they can’t pretend all is hunky dory.
So, the very complicated and expansive version of what you are talking about is Hedonics, Hedonic Adjustments… and lets just say it is so fucking technical and complicated that as I have said elsewhere in this thrrad, I basically have PTSD from trying to have detailed discussions about which elements of this are valid and to what extent they are valid.
Its not quite as simple and straightforwardly bullshit as you describe, but it also does functionally end up resulting in the general bullshit that you do describe… its just that quantifying the exact amount of bullshit happening, due to illegitimate hedonic adjustments… is a statistical and accounting nightmare.
Wouldn’t hedonic adjustments go the other direction from what the parent comment is saying? If the quality goes down, then the adjustment should increase the stated inflation.
I read the parent comment as talking about substitution effects in consumer behavior, but the CPI doesn’t reweight month to month (it used to only adjust once every few years, but has recently switched to once a year).
So generally, substitution bias makes the CPI overstate the inflation as actually experienced by the typical household.
Substitution bias tends to overstate inflation, because they only reweight once a year (which is much more frequently than what they used to do). And the reweighting of the components won’t change the fact that the individual components continue to be published.
Beef is getting much more expensive than it used to be. In the 90’s, ground beef used to be cheaper per pound than chicken breast. In the 30 years since, beef has gotten expensive much faster than chicken, and now ground beef costs almost 50% more than ground beef:
They constantly tell you the monthly rate for the same reason as credit card companies (to obscure the long term effects). It’s a grift either way. I think that’s a point of the comic.
To add to your comment, if anyone is interested in the data series for steaks generally:
Wow this is a great write up
I am an unemployed econometrician, and laughing about it.
I’m sorry to hear that, because your amazing talents and dedication could be purposed to save our country and world.
Thank you for drafting all this and for taking the time to teach us. You’re awesome.
Unfortunately that world runs on nepotism and schmoozing and ‘prestigious accolades’ (aka you have to start off rich) and I am too autistic and too lowborn.
I could go into an entire schpiel, with cited data and sources, showing that meritocracy is near nonexistant in the US, but uh… this is one of those uh, bell curve memes with the caveman and wizard on both ends, and neurotic normie in the middle.
You do enough data analysis and one day it hits you that 90% of people cannot or do not read data, and then you realize you have to craft a narrative device if you want any hope of anyone actually absorbing what you’re saying lol.
If its any consolation to you… I have ideas for someday making a very comprehensive immersive sim type game… but at the scale of Kenshi, not your traditional imsim that is basically a series of small levels with choices.
Maybe someday I will get some of this working before the actual real world apocalypse/mass economic collapse, rofl.
You do enough data analysis and one day it hits you that 90% of people cannot or do not read data
100% for real. It’s like I went to grad school to learn how to be ignored by people. People also behave the same way with internet privacy and personal data online, and so between the two I feel like Kassandra, cursed to shout warnings that go unheeded and point out data that connects it all. Even with a good narrative and meet them in the middle examples, many people simply can’t handle any single tiny aspect of their worldview be changed, one iota.
FWIW, if you have time at the moment, there’s a TON of resources online to make coding a game very, very easy, and can be done for relatively little to no money. It’s the artwork that takes time and effort. Just don’t expect to get rich from it.
Hah yeah, Kassandra is a good analogy.
Boy who cried wolf but no actually he was right the whole time and you just thought he was a witch.
As to game dev: Fortunately, I have a lot of experience making mods and game modes for games, I have also worked as a software dev, and I am very much aware of, and actively catalouging, a whole bunch of useful concepts and opensource code and projects and such.
My main ‘blocker’ right now is that I got fucking crippled in a mugging / car jacking and am still recovering… I am just in too much pain to be able to physically make the game, write the code.
The good news there is my daily at home PT is working, things are improving every day, bit by bit… but it still may take a good chunk of time.
So I just catalogue and basically do framing and conceptual work for how systems would work and integrate.
I don’t expect to get rich haha, I would be happy if I ended up with a game I enjoy playing.
Ah! Sorry about the incident and injury! All the best on your recovery, that’s terrible.
Yes, a game is a great idea.
My friend has a degree in computing and statistics, working in climate change studies at Uni in the early 90’s. Being a greenie he was disappointed that it seemed futile because, as you said, most people don’t care about data.
He moved into electronic music thinking he could influence people with messages there (kind of like Simpsons embed messaging).
We now know that pop culture propaganda is somewhat futile in this regard too and if humanity does pull itself out of this mess it will be a vast combination of efforts in many fields. All of them seem futile in isolation.
So hey, I’m an econometrics guy (by hobby) who specializes in narratives. Funny us meeting.
This was very informative, thanks for taking the time to write it.
Thanks for reading it!
Too bad when I pointed this kinda shit out when it was more nascent, a decade ago, everyone acted like I was a hysterical loon… fucking oh well I guess!
Hope you’re stocked up on rice and beans and spam and what not.
Ty
TL;DR: so, we’re fucked? That good enough? 😉
The whole entire scope of how fucked we are is way, way worse than just inflation in the US…
but yes, we, broadly, as humans, anywhere on the planet, that may want to live through the next 20 or 30 years… yep we are fucked.
No clue where you are on the planet. However, if you’re within reach, I’d be happy to buy you a drink. Cheers! 🍻🍹🍶
Don’t drink? GFY … enjoy the end of Humanity on your own 😉
I rarely drink due to alcoholism running through the family, but yeah, I’ll take a double shot of bourbon please, lol.
On that note, may be worth looking into how to do some uh, home distillation, at very small scales, what with the impending collapse of Kentucky’s spirits industry.
Also… kombucha may be a good deal easier to make? No clue, but I am some kind of absurd hipster that prefers kombucha over beer but also still very much likes whiskey and bourbon.
I’m extremely lazy at home. I don’t even put bread in the toaster or pasta in a pot. So, I’m not making anything.
Well, you may find yourself needing to cook some soon, if the cost of food keeps going up and up.
Microwave meals may end up being both unhealthy and unaffordable fairly soon.
PB&J, all the way!
People need to learn that when they hear ‘inflation is down’, it doesn’t mean things are getting cheaper, it just means that the increase in cost is slowing down.
Is it a psychological tactic that news media is using to make consumers more complacent? Who knows. But, whenever I hear someone mention that phrase like things are improving, I die a little more each time.
How it feels when headlines celebrate that inflation is down:
Celebrating the discontinuance of something bad happening… isn’t that weird.
Tactics like this can be used because the education system has gotten so bad that people have terrible critical thinking skills.
They want us smart enough to push the buttons and pull the levers, but dumb enough to not realize how badly we’re getting fucked.
The inflation figure is an annual figure though. It means things are 2.7% more expensive than they were last year. OP is showing an example nearer 60%.
Inflation isn’t based on the cost of a single thing. You’re confusing it with stocks.
It’s actually showing 47%. The price is based on pounds which increased from $10.99 to $15.99.
Since it’s from April to August, it’s actually showing 31% annual.
And since a sample size of one, and the location is redacted (could be comparing Texas with NYC or Hawaii) it’s showing nothing.
And meat prices are factored into a CPI I presume.
if inflation made my paycheck go up, that’d be great. As it stands I have a LOT less buying power and my industry is waffling so I’m only seeing 2% increases for years.
It exists. In Belgium and I think also Luxembourg inflation in prices of common consumer things automatically triggers wages, unemployment money, pensions to rise too. For most jobs it triggers when it hits 2%. Life got 2 % more expensive, wages rise 2 % a few months / a year later. Using a basket of consumer prices, excluding things like fuel, alcohol, tobacco prices
Heh I stopped in Belgium years before the Euro money conversion, chill place. I remember going to an atm to get some local currency to shop and the options were something like 1000, 5000, 10000. It was pre smartphone so I had no idea what the conversion was or what to choose. So I just hit something in the middle and had WAY too much money to buy some fresh fruit and chocolate.
Yet they still manage to fuck us over by “jumping” an index. 2% may not seem much now but compounded we lose a lot over the years
In other countries EVERY index gets jumped unless they successfully negotiate/strike for the raise. Yeah, jumped index sucks but it was still a rather occasional thing. There’s been only 4 I think, 3 times in the eighties, 1 time in 2015…
You (and every step angle other employee at your company) should be demanding AT LEAST an inflation adjustment every year from your boss.
Sure, but to only get told there is no budget now and it will be re-evaluated next year
Which is the point of having the rest of the employees behind you, no raise, no work.
The Titanic is sinking slower! HORRAY!
“Inflation is just supply-and-demand when you think about it.”
Not really… The economy is more and more controlled by a hand full of large multinationals. So if one corporation has 90% of the market (using different brand names to fake competition), they can raise the price far beyond just supply and demand. In the end we all need food and Healthcare etc. When you have the option of paying way to much (for some medicine) or dying, you can’t really say no, right.
And shelter, which developers, slumlords, and property management companies would be more than happy to see doubled every decade.
If you include necessities beyond just what is needed to not end up dead, we also have:
- Electricity
- Sewage and waste disposal
- Personal transportation (in North America, where suburbs are sprawling and transit is inadequate)
- Phone or internet (needed for employment)
There are plenty of places where the average person has no choice but to get bent over and fucked by profit-seeking corporations.
Yes, vut with the supply being almost literally just a printer. Typically 2% inflation are intentionally targeted to prevent deflation (which is also not good).
Lab grow all meats. Problem solved. Too bad Trump and his stupid MAGA base are against it. Timeline blows.
Why would a capitalist company making fake beef be any less inclined to upcharge on fake beef compared to real beef?
They both have lines that must go up.
Sure, but if no one can afford to buy artificially inflated real meat prices, that’s a good reason to sell fake beef at a price where people can afford it… And THEN you start to increase the price of that too, but only once a Democrat is president so people can freak out like they did with egg prices
Lab grown meat isn’t currently scalable at that level. Wish it were but unfortunately not. Consider not eating meat 👍 it’s cheaper
I literally will become anemic if I don’t eat meat. I grew up vegetarian for religious reasons; it was hell until my doctor worked with a nutritionist when I was a kid and determined that my body just needs the complex protein density that is provided in lean meat.
That being said, considering the global catastrophe that is the way we produce and distribute meat as a civilization, I’m happy to pay high prices for quality and (to the extent any can be) ethically produced cuts.
Of course,
<redacted>tariff wars will hurt extra to me and others like myself.Spinach, broccoli, broth?
Not enough long-chain protein per gram. Though I do eat (and drink, re: broth) those foods.
Then why are states banning it on behalf of Big Ag lobbyists? If it’s not a threat, why would they?
as if republicans needed a reason to placate idiots with their legislation
Because it isnt households that want it, its the big companies that make processed meat products or burger chains. If moving to lab grown saves McDonalds 5 cents per burger thats 127 million dollars a year. Imagine how much chicken companies that make cheap breaded nuggets use…
The moment it becomes financially viable to build their own factory they will.
My household wants it, and I’ve spoken to many others who want it. And they’re specifically banning it from sale to direct consumers.
Ill rephrase “it isnt the average household” Lemmy skews hard left, go on facebook and see any discussion about lab grown or plant based and read the “I’ll never buy this shit” from people who you KNOW wont check the ingredients list before dunking the chicken nuggets into their trolley or their cookies into their trolley if they figure out plant based eggs…
The thing about products without any demand is that you don’t have to ban them. People just won’t buy them.
You only have to ban things when they’re in demand.
Because here in America we longer innovate, we litigate.
It can still cut into profits even if it isn’t scalable to being a full solution and it is still worth it for consumers even if it can’t be worth it for every consumer.
All this can still be true even if “lab grow all meats. problem solved” is not true (or at least not possible, even if it is a logically valid construction).
Well then you should present your research to the Big Ag companies, and cash your massive check. Apparently you know something they don’t.
Hmm I really don’t think you understood me at all or else I just really don’t understand what you’re trying to say lol.
I mix my meat with veggies and carbs to make it go longer
I think thats just called a balanced diet man /s
Nah, that’s not balanced yet. You gotta take the combined weight of all that other stuff, and eat twice that in bread and carbs.
this post brought to you by the old food pyramid
that’s just a food triangle, now square that amount of carbs and we’ve got a pyramid. i took geometry duh
Which has the added benefit of tasting super nice
it’s more of a seasoning now
It’s not like it’s on store shelves. It has to exist in the realm of reality before the public can weigh in to determine its corporate viability/profitability.
It’s available in at least 1 restaurant. But it is also completely outlawed in at least 2 states with more trying to ban it.
? How is it outlawed? First time I hear this 😱
It’s been made illegal to sell in Florida and Alabama and Texas is about to follow suit.
7 states. Blame the huge corporate Ag industry lobbying against it.
https://stateline.org/2025/06/30/texas-becomes-seventh-state-to-ban-lab-grown-meat/
So many good things in our country have come from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizens_United_v._FEC
/s in case that wasn’t clear
figure out the bovine serum problem
The problem concerns ethics surrounding pain and discomfort the fetus may suffer in extracting the FSB without anesthesia.
Use fucking anesthesia? 🤷♂️
the biggest issue is that there’s no vegan, or even affordable alternative.
so that’s like using a full can of high grade foie gras to make a sliver of “vegan” duck breast.
original typo was “Fuck breast”, and i debated leaving it there
They use a “basket of goods” that conveniently has nothing to do with how real people actually live.
According to our studies: accordion straps, horse shoes, goat bladder, those antenna from old TVs, and musket shot prices have all remained stable! Inflation solved!
You joke but musket shot ie. Soft lead is actually up as well.
Boil the tap water and profit!
braidon save the big piece of tv antenna for your father he had a long day
They use chained CPI too, which accounts for “the consumer adjusting their purchasing”. It literally bakes in the concept of enshittification.
You see, inflation is not in fact up, because if you replace your steak dinners with ground beef, you will be spending just as much as before!
If retirees replace beef with beaf, social security will save millions! That’s fiscal responsibility.
It’s The Jungle all over again. History sure rhymes.
Hedonics is a whole fucking thing… I… I dont wanna talk about it lol.
What I can briefly mention is that uh…yeah, recently?
Well, there have been budget cuts to the orgs and personnel that actuslly do the price surveys… so a growing number of econ data dorks suspect that… we are now up to roughly 1/3 of individual items in the CPI being calculated by… imputation.
Which is more or less a fancy stats way of saying ‘we were not actually able to count this so we are just gonna assume it stayed the same.’
And thats all before Trump just straight up fired the BLS chief and replaced her with a Jan 6th insurrectionist.
You really shouldn’t underfund or fuck with the people that produce some of the most important numbers in a financialized market economy, but oh well I guess!
Into lalaland we a-go.
Beef, in particular, has experienced an intense price shock following a national shortage of cattle, with the national herd at a 73-year low.
This stems from severe drought conditions that have been plaguing the cattle-heavy mountain west for the better part of the last decade. Higher feed prices have also contributed to rising prices. But even beyond that, demand for beef continues to outpace the supply, driving prices upward as the raw supply of cattle falls.
I guess vegans can kinda-sorta rejoice. We’re killing fewer cows and wasting less animal product, as the conditions of our country making herding both environmentally and ecologically unsustainable. This has spurred more investment into alt-meats, while also forcing states to grapple with how they’re expending diminished water reserves.
But since we live in a plutocracy, I’m not sure we’ll get better policy out of these material changes to the ecology. Mark Zuckerberg can keep force-feeding his Austin steers buckets of macadamia nuts while his AI factors belch CO2 and guzzle potable water long after the rest of us are living in Gaza-like conditions.
I guess vegans can kinda-sorta rejoice. We’re killing fewer cows and wasting less animal product, as the conditions of our country making herding both environmentally and ecologically unsustainable. This has spurred more investment into alt-meats, while also forcing states to grapple with how they’re expending diminished water reserves.
I switched to being a vegetarian proper about a year ago, and its been a little validating that my grocery bills went down even when meat was more affordable, but now is dramatically cheaper since Quorn and Impossible meat haven’t inflated in price at all (and are even more affordable when picked up in bulk on sale for the freezer).
Those two alternatives are astonishingly good, even enabling me to convert my lifelong meat eating family to vegetarianism which was unreal to see. I can’t even tell I’m not eating meat in all the meat-based dishes I use them in, they’re so damn good. Also nice to avoid the increased cancer risk from red meat.
For anyone else reading this, I massively recommend giving those two meat alternatives a shot. Impossible is 1-to-1, and the Quorn only needs a good vegan bullion cube of whatever meat you’re trying to replicate (or Marmite for Beef flavor) and it’s perfect for anything.
We’ve been importing beef primarily from Brazil to make up the shortfall. Guess what country got a 50% tariff that has stuck?
Because they’re “not nice to us”. Lmao. Fucking peach pedophile there.
Finland has been having “sorry for the beef shortage” signs on the shelves for at least like a month and a half. Less now, but for the last month or a couple
I’m gonna drop this here. No reason. Probably the same no reason they chose this topic last week.
Planet Money (podcast)
What happens when governments cook the books
August 8, 202510:48 PM ET
By Mary Childs, Sally Helm, Jess Jiang, Sam Yellowhorse Keslerhttps://www.npr.org/2025/08/08/1256971798/bls-bureau-labor-statistics-greece-argentina
Yes, thank you! I wish I could upvote you twice. It’s immediately what I thought of, especially some of the methods governments can use to shift inflation numbers. Great episode, would recommend people listen given its relevance.
Eh, 49 + 2.7 = 76 ; close enough
/s
Not the most fair comparison. Cattle herd is smallest it’s been in 60+ years and prices haven’t gone high enough to reduce demand enough that the herd can rebound yet. You’ll see higher beef prices for another 2 years before things calm down again.
Cattle numbers are definitely down, but monopolization of ranching has been carrying on at a pretty good clip as well. I think it’s a safe bet that the new point of equilibrium they find will still be more expensive, even inflation adjusted. There’s a similar trend across most agribusiness that I’ve seen, especially with farms going out of business in droves because of the pandemic.
Cattle numbers are also down because of Trump btw. Long term effect from his 1st presidency + his current policies helped the screw worm flies get through Panama.
As much as it fun to rag on supposedly out of touch economists, this “cheapflation” phenomenon is very documented and accepted among mainstream economists. Like many others in the public sector, government economists have been calling for more suitable and timely measures of inflation for decades, only to have their requests for more funding and support denied as the public service falls apart.
Price discounts and cheapflation during the post-pandemic inflation surge - ScienceDirect - https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0304393224000977
It was just announced yesterday that inflation is up 3.3%.
Still not 60% as per OPs example.
I know, but it’s the true inflation rate, and I want to make sure EVERYBODY sees it, especially MAGA Nazis.
3.3% this month, up from 2.7% last month. Great job HitlerPig.
Ops example would show 31%, if it was statistically significant at all.
it’s actually fits 3%… PER MONTH
april '24 to august '25 is 16 months
1.0316 = 1.605
$49.24 * 1.6 = $78.78
It’s not per month. The “published” figures per month are usually like 0.2-0.4
The purpose of a system is what it does. Inflation isn’t just temporarily malfunctioning - it’s a transfer of wealth from the poor to the rich.
You’re spot on because inflation is what allows the whole thing to work. If instead there was rapid deflation on the trillions of debt held by Americans it would cause many to default.
But hell, talking about inflation is so weird because to most I feel like it just means the things people buy are now more expensive. Things are more expensive because people are able/willing to pay more, they’re just in the losing side of the disparity. It wasn’t inflation of the dollar that caused housing prices in places like Phoenix to climb over the past 20 years, it was people with more money than them moving in from places like California.
You’re a fucking genius! Just pay less for things and inflation will go down!
That’s not “inflation.” That’s tariffs. And it wasn’t “inflation” under Biden. It was price gouging.
Fuck, I wish some of y’all would read a book once in a while.
Tariffs cause inflation. Price gouging also causes inflation.
“Inflation” doesn’t just mean ‘prices go up.’ Again, please read a fucking book.
It pretty much does.
In economics, inflation is an increase in the average price of goods and services in terms of money.[4][5]: 579 This increase is measured using a price index, typically a consumer price index (CPI).
