6 ms·

Usually if official statistics and what you see are misaligned, its the official statistics that are wrong. What's your general impression regarding price leve

by bko 5y ago

Usually if official statistics and what you see are misaligned, its the official statistics that are wrong. What's your general impression regarding price levels in the US? How much has your grocery bill gone up? How about rent? What about restaurant bills? Services like haircuts? Whats your credit card bill look like, excluding gasoline? Personally I have seen prices go up well above 10%. Inflation metrics are complicated and there is a huge incentive to keep the official numbers down as they affect trillions in spending in terms of social security and other numbers tied to official inflation. To put this number in context, Congress gave themselves a 21% increase in House office budgets to account for inflation

JumpCrisscross 5y ago
> Congress gave themselves a 21% increase in House office budgets to account for inflation For staffers. Not members of Congress [1]. Never officially tied to inflation. [1] https://www.factcheck.org/2022/03/spending-bill-includes-pay-raise-for-staffers-not-members-of-congress/ https://www.factcheck.org/2022/03/spending-bill-includes-pay...
- bko 5y ago
  Right, that's what I said. For office budgets. I didn't say it was for them. I got the numbers from that exact website. It's not "officially tied to inflation" but obviously if you increase budgets its due to higher costs.
  - jlmorton 5y ago
    > but obviously if you increase budgets its due to higher costs That isn't remotely obvious and in this case is very obviously not true. This is a chronically underfunded program that Democrats have been lobbying to increase for years. AOC, for instance, has been pushing for this since she first entered Congress, well before any inflation showed up. It's entirely disingenuous to point to a budget increase in a single extremely-small Congressional staff program and paint it as evidence of broad-based inflation.
    - deltarholamda 5y ago
      >It's entirely disingenuous to point to a budget increase in a single extremely-small Congressional staff program and paint it as evidence of broad-based inflation. Maybe, but it's a perfectly valid data point. Congressional staffers are struggling because, in the D.C. area, costs are rising very quickly, and the low-paid staffers are having trouble paying bills because of it. It's not disingenuous to suggest this is a signal. Also, Democrats are always lobbying for an increase in all budgets. They got this one through because they were going to lose staff who can't make the job work because of rising living costs. I.e., inflation.
      - ChrisLomont 5y ago
        >It's not disingenuous to suggest this is a signal. So would it disingenuous to point out Xbox prices dropped significantly recently then claim it as evidence there is no inflation? Using such simple, single data points is disingenuous when there is ample broad based data to point to instead. Ask why he picked something with a 21% increase instead of something with a 4% increase, then you understand why it's disingenuous. That is the problem with anecdotes versus broad and properly computed inflation.
tomatowurst 5y ago
Across the board? At least 25%, 50% in some sectors like foods. They keep, and some people on HN, keep calling it a conspiracy when you mention actual inflation is a lot higher than reported, my question is what is this crowd's reasoning? Are they so well off that they are not able to see the rapid rise in prices because they use maids to do the grocery shopping? Why is it a conspiracy to suggest actual inflation is far above and beyond what is reported by the Feds, who are stuck between a rock and a hard place when it comes to controlling the money markets now? If they raise rates to match actual inflation they are going to cause the asset bubble to burst. If they don't raise rates than they are going to find hyperinflation that will certainly damage USD's "exorbitant privilege"
- JumpCrisscross 5y ago
  > Why is it a conspiracy to suggest actual inflation is far above and beyond what is reported by the Feds The conspiracy is that it’s treated as a conspiracy. Local inflation varies wildly [1]. In official statistics. And inflation is personal, dependent on your basket of goods and services. There is no market evidence that inflation is endemic, but the market is frequently wrong. > so well off that they are not able to see the rapid rise in prices Many on this forum have equity holdings and/or in-demand jobs. Those make one somewhat inflation tolerant. [1] https://www.bls.gov/charts/consumer-price-index/consumer-price-index-by-metro-area.htm https://www.bls.gov/charts/consumer-price-index/consumer-pri...
  - rayiner 5y ago
    > Many on this forum have equity holdings and/or in-demand jobs. Those make one somewhat inflation tolerant. Yeah I’m genuinely shocked that people seem so upset about inflation. Then again I couldn’t tell you if the gas price down the road begins with a 3, a 4, or a 5.
- hn_throwaway_99 5y ago
  > They keep, and some people on HN, keep calling it a conspiracy when you mention actual inflation is a lot higher than reported, my question is what is this crowd's reasoning? I wouldn't call it a conspiracy, but throwing out random number like "25-50%" because you noticed your one specific grocery bill is more expensive also isn't an argument I'm going to give much credence to. The government is actually very transparent about how they calculate inflation and what goes into it, so if you're going to argue that they're bullshitting you need to argue one of: 1. The basket that they use to calculate the price index isn't a good representation of most people. 2. They're fibbing on specific prices. 3. The "smoothing" they always do can hide some of the recent acute inflation. If you want to make any of those arguments, with data, great! Please go ahead. I've certainly seen plenty of good arguments related to points 1 and 3, not so much point 2. Otherwise, it's fine to say you notice things you buy seem a lot more expensive, but that's not an argument that the Fed is somehow fudging the numbers.
ajross 5y ago
> Usually if official statistics and what you see are misaligned, its the official statistics that are wrong. "What you see" is literally what's being measured, though. Typical prices for typical commodities grew less than expected. The outlier is one particular commodity (petroleum) which is experiencing an external shock. Sanctions on Russia are poorly explained as "inflation", obviously. > Personally I have seen prices go up well above 10%. On what? Does that not match up with the data in the report? If so, document it! You'll be internet famous, if nothing else.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
long_time_gone 5y ago
> Personally I have seen prices go up well above 10%. For what goods/services? Have you been tracking the same goods/services over the past year to make this analysis? > Inflation metrics are complicated and there is a huge incentive to keep the official numbers down as they affect trillions in spending in terms of social security and other numbers tied to official inflation. You haven't provided anything aside from personal anecdote (without any actual data to support it). Your understanding is built entirely on your own experience, the official numbers are built on a transparent basket of goods that is meant to represent the entire country. For me, housing costs (most people's largest expense) hasn't changed in 3 years because I have a 30-year mortgage. Does that mean that the 5% CPU measure of housing expenses is false? Of course not.
TameAntelope 5y ago
Going with your experiences over soundly collected data is a very risky move prone to bias and discrimination (only noticing what affects people like you). Data, when reported by a reputable organization, is going to be substantially more predictive.
- aww_dang 5y ago
  Reputability is equally subjective. It is not immune from bias and discrimination. Incentives are another interesting factor to consider.
  - TameAntelope 5y ago
    Reputability is not equally subjective (though it is somewhat subjective), it is based on past performance and current utilization through a trust network. If an institution has a history of providing a certain quality of service, and is successfully used to make highly consequential decisions, it is objectively more reputable than an institution with neither of those things.
    - dragonwriter 5y ago
      > Reputability is not equally subjective Reputability is the aggregate of individual opinion, which is the definition of subjectivity.
      - ChrisLomont 5y ago
        By that argument, all knowledge and belief and fact is the aggregate of individual opinion, so nothing would be objective. More likely there is a continuum, and more reputable places have more objective (and hence less subjective) output than less reputable places.
        aww_dang 5y ago
        Consider the contrast between these statements: "The Bureau of Labor Statistics is a reputable institution" "A triangle has three sides" "Governments, politicians and their bureaucrats are trustworthy" "Two parallel lines will never meet" http://steve-patterson.com/deduction-induction-and-axioms/ http://steve-patterson.com/deduction-induction-and-axioms/
mywittyname 5y ago
>Usually if official statistics and what you see are misaligned, its the official statistics that are wrong. See, I think the opposite. If your numbers differ from the US gov. official ones, you're either doing something wrong, or measuring a different thing. The BLS in particular aims for consistency in reporting. They ask people what they bought, and for how much, then they go around collecting real world pricing information about products. No other entity is putting that much work and effort into collecting pricing information. So anyone reporting different numbers is less accurate than the official BLS ones. Even people who complain that they under-report "real" inflation use BLS numbers, but they change the weights on the various categories such that categories experiencing the highest inflation are also weight the highest.
ChrisLomont 5y ago
>Usually if official statistics and what you see are misaligned, its the official statistics that are wrong. Nope, a few people's unmeasured selection bias is no where near as accurate as a professional methodology done like the official numbers. >there is a huge incentive to keep the official numbers down Also false. If the numbers were gamed, there would be significant arbitrage employed in markets to extract value from the lie. There are ample papers analyzing this, and no one has found a way to do it, since the numbers are the best possible. Also the numbers are done in many places, from Goldman Sachs, to the Billion Prices project at MIT, to the Bureau of labor and Statistics, and so on. If you really think the numbers are gamed, do this experiment (I have, it's easy to do, and then you'll never claim the numbers are gamed again since you methodically checked them). Take BLS listed inflation for a decent period of time, say 20-30 years. Make a basket of goodssplit by how most people buy: energy, housing, food, eneterainment, etc. Pick a list of goods, say same sized apartments, houses, foods, etc. Look at prices now. Write them down. Hide that list so you don't cheat. Look at ads from the beginning of the period. Get prices. Compute. Now add say 1% to BLS annual inflation numbers, and compute. Viola! BLS and rest are very accurate. People's unmeasured selection bias beliefs are not.
esoterica 5y ago
> Usually if official statistics and what you see are misaligned, its the official statistics that are wrong. This is QAnon tier logic. “All my friends voted for Trump, therefore the vote count was fabricated!”
- onlyrealcuzzo 5y ago
  > What's your general impression regarding price levels in the US? How much has your grocery bill gone up? My grocery bill isn't in a vacuum. Does anyone buy the same basket of groceries constantly? My career has been on a steady rise and my lifestyle has inflated. > How about rent? It's up a TON in many LCOL places - but in many of the most expensive places, it's gone up less in the last 3 years than normal (and in some places down). Either way - 67% of people are homeowners, and their payments went DOWN a lot because the Fed allowed everyone to refinance at historically low levels. > What about restaurant bills? Services like haircuts? My anecdata is that I'm shocked so far none of this has gone up. I do expect it HAS to go up probably 10-20-50% eventually / soon. But I haven't seen it happen yet. > Whats your credit card bill look like, excluding gasoline? Again - who's credit card bill is in a vacuum?
bluedino 5y ago
> How much has your grocery bill gone up? What about restaurant bills? What's interesting is although fast food prices have went up, it doesn't seem like casual dining chains have gone up. So even though steak prices have doubled at the grocery store, they've stayed the same at the chain steakhouses.
- bnycum 5y ago
  The highest end chain place I eat at is Chipotle, but I have noticed several increases in local restaurants. One we go to regularly went up 25% mid-late 2021, and recently went up another 33% on our normal order. Which I guess I should be glad about because most other ones have shut down.

by bko 5y ago

JumpCrisscross 5y ago

> Congress gave themselves a 21% increase in House office budgets to account for inflation For staffers. Not members of Congress [1]. Never officially tied to inflation. [1] https://www.factcheck.org/2022/03/spending-bill-includes-pay-raise-for-staffers-not-members-of-congress/ https://www.factcheck.org/2022/03/spending-bill-includes-pay...

bko 5y ago
Right, that's what I said. For office budgets. I didn't say it was for them. I got the numbers from that exact website. It's not "officially tied to inflation" but obviously if you increase budgets its due to higher costs.
- jlmorton 5y ago
  > but obviously if you increase budgets its due to higher costs That isn't remotely obvious and in this case is very obviously not true. This is a chronically underfunded program that Democrats have been lobbying to increase for years. AOC, for instance, has been pushing for this since she first entered Congress, well before any inflation showed up. It's entirely disingenuous to point to a budget increase in a single extremely-small Congressional staff program and paint it as evidence of broad-based inflation.
  - deltarholamda 5y ago
    >It's entirely disingenuous to point to a budget increase in a single extremely-small Congressional staff program and paint it as evidence of broad-based inflation. Maybe, but it's a perfectly valid data point. Congressional staffers are struggling because, in the D.C. area, costs are rising very quickly, and the low-paid staffers are having trouble paying bills because of it. It's not disingenuous to suggest this is a signal. Also, Democrats are always lobbying for an increase in all budgets. They got this one through because they were going to lose staff who can't make the job work because of rising living costs. I.e., inflation.
    - ChrisLomont 5y ago
      >It's not disingenuous to suggest this is a signal. So would it disingenuous to point out Xbox prices dropped significantly recently then claim it as evidence there is no inflation? Using such simple, single data points is disingenuous when there is ample broad based data to point to instead. Ask why he picked something with a 21% increase instead of something with a 4% increase, then you understand why it's disingenuous. That is the problem with anecdotes versus broad and properly computed inflation.

tomatowurst 5y ago

Across the board? At least 25%, 50% in some sectors like foods. They keep, and some people on HN, keep calling it a conspiracy when you mention actual inflation is a lot higher than reported, my question is what is this crowd's reasoning? Are they so well off that they are not able to see the rapid rise in prices because they use maids to do the grocery shopping? Why is it a conspiracy to suggest actual inflation is far above and beyond what is reported by the Feds, who are stuck between a rock and a hard place when it comes to controlling the money markets now? If they raise rates to match actual inflation they are going to cause the asset bubble to burst. If they don't raise rates than they are going to find hyperinflation that will certainly damage USD's "exorbitant privilege"

JumpCrisscross 5y ago
> Why is it a conspiracy to suggest actual inflation is far above and beyond what is reported by the Feds The conspiracy is that it’s treated as a conspiracy. Local inflation varies wildly [1]. In official statistics. And inflation is personal, dependent on your basket of goods and services. There is no market evidence that inflation is endemic, but the market is frequently wrong. > so well off that they are not able to see the rapid rise in prices Many on this forum have equity holdings and/or in-demand jobs. Those make one somewhat inflation tolerant. [1] https://www.bls.gov/charts/consumer-price-index/consumer-price-index-by-metro-area.htm https://www.bls.gov/charts/consumer-price-index/consumer-pri...
- rayiner 5y ago
  > Many on this forum have equity holdings and/or in-demand jobs. Those make one somewhat inflation tolerant. Yeah I’m genuinely shocked that people seem so upset about inflation. Then again I couldn’t tell you if the gas price down the road begins with a 3, a 4, or a 5.
hn_throwaway_99 5y ago
> They keep, and some people on HN, keep calling it a conspiracy when you mention actual inflation is a lot higher than reported, my question is what is this crowd's reasoning? I wouldn't call it a conspiracy, but throwing out random number like "25-50%" because you noticed your one specific grocery bill is more expensive also isn't an argument I'm going to give much credence to. The government is actually very transparent about how they calculate inflation and what goes into it, so if you're going to argue that they're bullshitting you need to argue one of: 1. The basket that they use to calculate the price index isn't a good representation of most people. 2. They're fibbing on specific prices. 3. The "smoothing" they always do can hide some of the recent acute inflation. If you want to make any of those arguments, with data, great! Please go ahead. I've certainly seen plenty of good arguments related to points 1 and 3, not so much point 2. Otherwise, it's fine to say you notice things you buy seem a lot more expensive, but that's not an argument that the Fed is somehow fudging the numbers.

ajross 5y ago

> Usually if official statistics and what you see are misaligned, its the official statistics that are wrong. "What you see" is literally what's being measured, though. Typical prices for typical commodities grew less than expected. The outlier is one particular commodity (petroleum) which is experiencing an external shock. Sanctions on Russia are poorly explained as "inflation", obviously. > Personally I have seen prices go up well above 10%. On what? Does that not match up with the data in the report? If so, document it! You'll be internet famous, if nothing else.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

long_time_gone 5y ago

> Personally I have seen prices go up well above 10%. For what goods/services? Have you been tracking the same goods/services over the past year to make this analysis? > Inflation metrics are complicated and there is a huge incentive to keep the official numbers down as they affect trillions in spending in terms of social security and other numbers tied to official inflation. You haven't provided anything aside from personal anecdote (without any actual data to support it). Your understanding is built entirely on your own experience, the official numbers are built on a transparent basket of goods that is meant to represent the entire country. For me, housing costs (most people's largest expense) hasn't changed in 3 years because I have a 30-year mortgage. Does that mean that the 5% CPU measure of housing expenses is false? Of course not.

TameAntelope 5y ago

Going with your experiences over soundly collected data is a very risky move prone to bias and discrimination (only noticing what affects people like you). Data, when reported by a reputable organization, is going to be substantially more predictive.

aww_dang 5y ago
Reputability is equally subjective. It is not immune from bias and discrimination. Incentives are another interesting factor to consider.
- TameAntelope 5y ago
  Reputability is not equally subjective (though it is somewhat subjective), it is based on past performance and current utilization through a trust network. If an institution has a history of providing a certain quality of service, and is successfully used to make highly consequential decisions, it is objectively more reputable than an institution with neither of those things.
  - dragonwriter 5y ago
    > Reputability is not equally subjective Reputability is the aggregate of individual opinion, which is the definition of subjectivity.
    - ChrisLomont 5y ago
      By that argument, all knowledge and belief and fact is the aggregate of individual opinion, so nothing would be objective. More likely there is a continuum, and more reputable places have more objective (and hence less subjective) output than less reputable places.
      - aww_dang 5y ago
        Consider the contrast between these statements: "The Bureau of Labor Statistics is a reputable institution" "A triangle has three sides" "Governments, politicians and their bureaucrats are trustworthy" "Two parallel lines will never meet" http://steve-patterson.com/deduction-induction-and-axioms/ http://steve-patterson.com/deduction-induction-and-axioms/

mywittyname 5y ago

>Usually if official statistics and what you see are misaligned, its the official statistics that are wrong. See, I think the opposite. If your numbers differ from the US gov. official ones, you're either doing something wrong, or measuring a different thing. The BLS in particular aims for consistency in reporting. They ask people what they bought, and for how much, then they go around collecting real world pricing information about products. No other entity is putting that much work and effort into collecting pricing information. So anyone reporting different numbers is less accurate than the official BLS ones. Even people who complain that they under-report "real" inflation use BLS numbers, but they change the weights on the various categories such that categories experiencing the highest inflation are also weight the highest.

ChrisLomont 5y ago

>Usually if official statistics and what you see are misaligned, its the official statistics that are wrong. Nope, a few people's unmeasured selection bias is no where near as accurate as a professional methodology done like the official numbers. >there is a huge incentive to keep the official numbers down Also false. If the numbers were gamed, there would be significant arbitrage employed in markets to extract value from the lie. There are ample papers analyzing this, and no one has found a way to do it, since the numbers are the best possible. Also the numbers are done in many places, from Goldman Sachs, to the Billion Prices project at MIT, to the Bureau of labor and Statistics, and so on. If you really think the numbers are gamed, do this experiment (I have, it's easy to do, and then you'll never claim the numbers are gamed again since you methodically checked them). Take BLS listed inflation for a decent period of time, say 20-30 years. Make a basket of goodssplit by how most people buy: energy, housing, food, eneterainment, etc. Pick a list of goods, say same sized apartments, houses, foods, etc. Look at prices now. Write them down. Hide that list so you don't cheat. Look at ads from the beginning of the period. Get prices. Compute. Now add say 1% to BLS annual inflation numbers, and compute. Viola! BLS and rest are very accurate. People's unmeasured selection bias beliefs are not.

esoterica 5y ago

> Usually if official statistics and what you see are misaligned, its the official statistics that are wrong. This is QAnon tier logic. “All my friends voted for Trump, therefore the vote count was fabricated!”

onlyrealcuzzo 5y ago
> What's your general impression regarding price levels in the US? How much has your grocery bill gone up? My grocery bill isn't in a vacuum. Does anyone buy the same basket of groceries constantly? My career has been on a steady rise and my lifestyle has inflated. > How about rent? It's up a TON in many LCOL places - but in many of the most expensive places, it's gone up less in the last 3 years than normal (and in some places down). Either way - 67% of people are homeowners, and their payments went DOWN a lot because the Fed allowed everyone to refinance at historically low levels. > What about restaurant bills? Services like haircuts? My anecdata is that I'm shocked so far none of this has gone up. I do expect it HAS to go up probably 10-20-50% eventually / soon. But I haven't seen it happen yet. > Whats your credit card bill look like, excluding gasoline? Again - who's credit card bill is in a vacuum?

bluedino 5y ago

> How much has your grocery bill gone up? What about restaurant bills? What's interesting is although fast food prices have went up, it doesn't seem like casual dining chains have gone up. So even though steak prices have doubled at the grocery store, they've stayed the same at the chain steakhouses.

bnycum 5y ago
The highest end chain place I eat at is Chipotle, but I have noticed several increases in local restaurants. One we go to regularly went up 25% mid-late 2021, and recently went up another 33% on our normal order. Which I guess I should be glad about because most other ones have shut down.