17 ms·

I find the whole "economic gloom" sentiment a bit odd. We're at extremely low unemployment, and GDP took a small dip in Q1/Q2 but is projected to start growing

by NickM 4y ago

I find the whole "economic gloom" sentiment a bit odd. We're at extremely low unemployment, and GDP took a small dip in Q1/Q2 but is projected to start growing again in the second half of the year. The S&P 500 is down less than 10% from it's all-time high. Inflation was an issue for a while, but a lot of that seemed to be driven more by temporary supply constraints in certain sectors than any actual currency devaluation, and inflation already seems to be dying down anyway. The recent interest rate hikes also didn't seem to have nearly as much impact on the markets as everyone feared they would. What exactly is everyone so scared about that we all seem to think the economy is headed for a major recession?

AnEro 4y ago
Knowing people that make under 60k a year, and how harder their lives got and how hard it is to pay back loans and other obligations they where ulitmately strong armed into taking to improve their position. Not to mention how alot of western nations have a large majority of people are pay check to pay check regardless of their tax bracket. Working class is a good litmus of how the economy is doing vs S&P because speculation can ultimately make it look like everything is fine until it isn't
- dtdimond 4y ago
  It's always been hard for people in those income buckets. But if the question is: are we in a massive economic downturn over the past half year, it's really hard for me to look at the data and answer with a yes. One thing I'm looking at is: https://realtimeinequality.org/ https://realtimeinequality.org/ And that's showing that for the first time in over a decade, the bottom half is seeing real wage/wealth gains, even after recent inflation. Am I missing something? Because your sentiment is the more common one.
  - kradeelav 4y ago
    Charts can lie. Whether or not you can buy bacon* or gas is real. *substitute with whatever staple you wish. I used bacon here since it's historically a working class' person's meat.
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
    - Red_Leaves_Flyy 4y ago
      Bacons a funny commodity, I don’t track the futures of it but always look at the grocery store. Pre pandemic bacon was around 2-3/lb for the cheap stuff, 4/lb for quality, and 6/lb for the niche products. I’ve seen these prices double since January this year and some products are up more than 400%. If this isn’ta sure sign of a serious problem I don’t know what would be.
      - jimmygrapes 4y ago
        Purely anecdotal but I remember buying 16pz packs of bacon for 1-2 dollars (in a large California city) for awhile, then this phenomenon called "Epic Meal Time" came about and Denny's was making bacon milkshakes and the Internet zeitgeist collectively went "lmao BACON!!" and soon after I was paying 4 dollars per pound. Supply and demand, maybe, sure. In my opinion, it was just demand and marketing. NOW it's supply and demand, though.
      - Kon-Peki 4y ago
        https://beta.bls.gov/dataViewer/view/timeseries/APU0000704111 https://beta.bls.gov/dataViewer/view/timeseries/APU000070411... Government price data for bacon goes back to 1980. PS - there are other price series about bacon, including regional prices: https://beta.bls.gov/dataQuery/find?removeAll=1&q=Bacon https://beta.bls.gov/dataQuery/find?removeAll=1&q=Bacon
        Red_Leaves_Flyy 4y ago
        Great contribution! Thank you! That website is arcane but the data is fantastic.
  - throwawaylinux 4y ago
    Wages were rising at a similar rate before the covid hit. Remove that dip and continue the line and it would end up in about the same place it is now. Wealth started growing since about 2019 too.
  - rdtwo 4y ago
    Yeah you are missing the fact that the bottom 50% of Americans don’t show up in economic charts or data. The wage disparity is so high that they basically become noise on most statistics. Basically if the top 10% do well then it looks like the entire country is doing great.
- D13Fd 4y ago
  Having debt is not the worst thing in an inflationary period. The inflation reduces the value of your debt.
  - rxhernandez 4y ago
    ONLY if your wages keep up with inflation.
    - nickserv 4y ago
      Exactly. Unless of course your income is so high that day to day expenditures are basically a rounding error. Then you can profit handsomely from other people's misery. The rich get richer, the poor get poorer is particularly true during times of high inflation (so long as not catastrophic).
    - D13Fd 4y ago
      Yes, that's true. But that's like saying "ONLY if you don't lose your job" or "ONLY if you don't get hit by a train."
    - __MatrixMan__ 4y ago
      Right. And the compensation changes associated with going to a different company are almost always better than letting your current company re-evaluate your pay. So if inflation causes people to jump ship to get market-adjusted pay, you now have formerly-productive people now in FNG-mode, which is a much more impactful phenomenon than inflation on its own.
  - nickserv 4y ago
    This is true for investment debt like real estate. If you're taking on debt to pay for basic necessities because salary rises don't match inflation it's an altogether different situation.
    - D13Fd 4y ago
      Yes, if you take on the debt after the inflation it does you no good. But if you take loans in 2015 dollars and repay them in 2022 dollars, you are better off in terms of repayment by having a lot of inflation during that period. It doesn't matter what purpose you took the loan for.
- dionidium 4y ago
  > how hard it is to pay back loans and other obligations they where ulitmately strong armed into taking to improve their position It's been a while since I've been in that income bracket, but I don't remember ever being strong-armed into taking on unnecessary debt. What are you referring to here?
  - Mezzie 4y ago
    Well, the big one is college debt, obviously. But another example that comes to mind (as someone who lives in that income bracket about half by choice and half not) are car repairs (you HAVE to pony up or you lose your job, so the question becomes 'borrow 1k or lose 100% of your income'). Oh, and any time childcare is fucked up for any reason. Kid can't go to daycare/school because they're sick for a week? Parents don't get PTO, so their only option is to eat a week's worth of wages, and since income in is close to or level with expenses out, that means making it up with debt. The 'strong arming' comes in because society is set up to make those your only options. (versus having public transit to rely on, walkable cities, or cheap car rentals, for example).
  - Sohcahtoa82 4y ago
    It doesn't have to be strong-arming, but what about propaganda? High schoolers are still being told "If you don't want to make minimum wage for your whole life, you need a college degree!", yet a high schooler certainly can't pay the $15K+ per year to get a degree, so they take out student loans. And then, the same people who hounded them to get a degree then hound them when they beg for student loan forgiveness, telling them they shouldn't have taken out a loan they wouldn't be able to afford to pay back. Damned if you do, damned if you don't.
    - dionidium 4y ago
      > "If you don't want to make minimum wage for your whole life, you need a college degree!" I started college in 1999. The day my freshmen year started, jokes about English majors asking if you want fries with that were already 60 years old. This argument is revisionist bunk, in other words. Everybody knows there are some degrees that are more valuable than others, that some degrees lead to higher pay and that some don't. Everybody knows this. They know it today and they knew it in 1999 and they knew it in 1979 and I categorically reject this weird, revisionist insistence that nobody could possibly have known it or that 18-year-olds are hapless dopes without any agency or even the most basic understanding of how the world works.
- dublin 4y ago
  We shouldn't be quite so smug. Most of what developers and other tech people do is not really needed. Nice, yeah. Required? Hell, no. Look at Facebook - they're currently the 8th most valuable company on the planet, but very few people really need what they provide, and most of their customers really don't like Facebook (and IG, etc.) and the way they know the company is manipulating them. Contrast that with a companies like Exxon or Amazon, which like them or not, produce products or services people need and want to buy. Ad markets would continue without them, and I'm already seeing companies shift marketing dollars away form digital given both poor results and waiting to see what happens. (And I'm in Austin, where things are relatively booming...) My point is simply that 80% of what we as techies do could be eliminated tomorrow, and the world would go on. The 20% remaining could (painfully) keep things going through a downturn, especially if the alternative is unemployment. If you think your company won't cut you loose if that 80% cost reduction becomes necessary due to depression-level forces, think again - you may not be so indispensable as you think, no matter your position - I've seen a couple of top-level thought leaders/innovators cut from local companies recently, something that didn't happen even in 2008! The reason is usually, "we're pulling back from investing in innovation and new product development." I've got a bad feeling about this...
hackitup7 4y ago
I feel like everyone is freaking out because we went from almost unprecedentedly high tech valuations in 2021 back to ~historical norms today, which feels bad. Example: For all of the years that I was working in SaaS between 2008 - Covid, I assumed that I should plan for a ~10x revenue multiple in the optimistic case.
sakopov 4y ago
> and inflation already seems to be dying down anyway. I̶ ̶d̶o̶n̶'̶t̶ ̶k̶n̶o̶w̶ ̶i̶f̶ ̶I̶'̶m̶ ̶t̶h̶a̶t̶ ̶o̶p̶t̶i̶m̶i̶s̶t̶i̶c̶.̶ ̶I̶ ̶t̶h̶i̶n̶k̶ ̶i̶n̶f̶l̶a̶t̶i̶o̶n̶ ̶i̶s̶ ̶s̶t̶i̶l̶l̶ ̶8̶.̶5̶%̶ ̶m̶o̶n̶t̶h̶-̶t̶o̶-̶m̶o̶n̶t̶h̶ ̶a̶n̶d̶ ̶o̶n̶l̶y̶ ̶d̶o̶w̶n̶ ̶0̶.̶6̶%̶ ̶f̶r̶o̶m̶ ̶p̶r̶e̶v̶i̶o̶u̶s̶ ̶m̶o̶n̶t̶h̶.̶ ̶W̶e̶'̶d̶ ̶n̶e̶e̶d̶ ̶s̶e̶v̶e̶r̶a̶l̶ ̶m̶o̶n̶t̶h̶s̶ ̶o̶f̶ ̶d̶r̶o̶p̶s̶ ̶t̶o̶ ̶c̶o̶n̶c̶l̶u̶d̶e̶ ̶t̶h̶a̶t̶ ̶i̶n̶f̶l̶a̶t̶i̶o̶n̶ ̶i̶s̶ ̶e̶a̶s̶i̶n̶g̶.̶ ̶I̶ ̶p̶e̶r̶s̶o̶n̶a̶l̶l̶y̶ ̶d̶o̶n̶'̶t̶ ̶s̶e̶e̶ ̶a̶n̶y̶ ̶p̶r̶i̶c̶e̶ ̶d̶r̶o̶p̶s̶ ̶o̶n̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶t̶h̶i̶n̶g̶s̶ ̶I̶ ̶a̶c̶t̶u̶a̶l̶l̶y̶ ̶u̶s̶e̶ ̶-̶ ̶f̶o̶o̶d̶,̶ ̶g̶a̶s̶ ̶a̶n̶d̶ ̶h̶o̶u̶s̶i̶n̶g̶.̶ ̶A̶l̶l̶ ̶r̶e̶m̶a̶i̶n̶ ̶s̶i̶g̶n̶i̶f̶i̶c̶a̶n̶t̶l̶y̶ ̶e̶l̶e̶v̶a̶t̶e̶d̶ ̶i̶n̶ ̶c̶o̶m̶p̶a̶r̶i̶s̶o̶n̶ ̶t̶o̶ ̶a̶ ̶y̶e̶a̶r̶ ̶a̶g̶o̶.̶
- jeffbee 4y ago
  You're not ever going to see long-term, broad price drops. That would be deflation. Your statement appears highly misleading, as if you don't understand the topic. Prices (in the U.S.) did not rise at all in July, so it's not clear what you could mean by "8.5% month-to-month" which, as stated, would be a spectacular and unprecedented rate. The month-over-month inflation in July was none. Prices rose 8.5% vs. year-ago.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - sakopov 4y ago
    You're right. I don't know what I'm talking about.
nathanyz 4y ago
I think many of the impacts to the economy from inflation and interest rate increases take time before we see the full picture. For example, the housing market seemed to still be hot even with increased rates, but that is because of the delay from sales to closings. Last month started showing decreases in sales in areas that were previously on fire. And anecdotally, listings in my area that would have sold in 1 day above the listed price which are currently still on market with multiple price cuts. The other big factor that is lingering are the student loan repayments which have been deferred for now. That is a huge chunk of monthly expense if/when they are reinstated which will have an impact on discretionary spending, etc.
Izkata 4y ago
> We're at extremely low unemployment Back in 2018/2019, when I got curious and looked at what signals people look at for recessions, too low unemployment was one of them.
- nchi3 4y ago
  What's the reasoning for this?
  - michael1999 4y ago
    Because the US Fed will cause a recession to resist wage inflation.
  - rdtwo 4y ago
    It indicates an overheated economy
hartator 4y ago
> What exactly is everyone so scared about that we all seem to think the economy is headed for a major recession? The economy seems to be doing well in 2019 dollars. However you have to take account that almost 2x more money have been printed since then. And if you divide all our numbers by 2, we are already in an economic disaster.
- estomagordo 4y ago
  Surely you're not saying that anyone who has the same riches today as compared to 3 years ago is, in fact, half as rich?
  - hartator 4y ago
    If you consider money should be rare right now not plentiful, I think it’s an accurate way to look at economics.
    - conductr 4y ago
      It does however take time for all the prices to go to 2x what they were. If we end up having 7 years of 10% inflation we will be there. Had this hypothetical person still just held onto their cash, they’ll be half as rich as they were in terms that matter (purchasing power). I for one would not be surprised at all if that’s what we’re in for.
felipellrocha 4y ago
I think you know the answer: > The recent interest rate hikes also didn't seem to have nearly as much impact on the markets as everyone feared they would. Markets aren’t rational
- colinmhayes 4y ago
  I think the markets have been far more rational with regards to rate hikes than you are giving them credit for. It's looking like the rate hikes were priced in back in early spring, and since they've actually been slower than expected the market has experienced a bit of a bounce back. Month over month inflation was 0 last month. We're obviously not out of the woods here, but consumer demand is dropping along with oil prices which seems to be leading the fed to believe that they may only need one more sub 1% hike in early fall. That would be much better than the doom scenarios everyone was talking about 6 months ago.
- hpkuarg 4y ago
  And, as we all know, they will remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent.
- __MatrixMan__ 4y ago
  How can you be sure? Maybe they're just acting according to a rationality that humans don't understand.
  - conductr 4y ago
    Or humans aren’t rational so neither are markets
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
rank0 4y ago
I think it’s easy to miss some of the very real pain lower income folks are experiencing right now if you’re not in their bracket. Inflation causes excess capital to flow into assets, which the poor don’t have and HN commenters do. The inflation issue is absolutely not solved. A single month from 9.1 -> 8.6 is FAR too soon for victory. I suspect the recent rally in the market comes from the assumption that the Fed will back off and that we have indeed already experienced peak inflation. CPI of 8.6 is still unacceptable and my guess is we’re gonna see more rate hikes and QT than the markets expect. That’ll mean mortgage rates go up, companies will have more difficulty servicing debt…etc We’re not in the clear quite yet!
- Negitivefrags 4y ago
  The move from 9.1 to 8.6 is due to a single month of zero. People forget that 11/12th of the data for the yearly number already happened when they see the new number each month. It’s not impossible that inflation is just 0% from here on out and yet it will still take a while for the yearly number to come down.
- NickM 4y ago
  I mean, I don't want to discount that many people are suffering, but real income growth for the bottom 50% of earners has gone up substantially over the last year (and, notably, have gone up more than for high-earners, percentage-wise). Rising prices are bad and all, but if wages go up more than prices, as they seem to have done, then on aggregate people should be doing better, not worse. Inflation causes excess capital to flow into assets, which the poor don’t have and HN commenters do. I'm not sure I agree with this, as inflation seems to have scared markets off of their peaks. I mean, they're not down that far, but I don't see a lot of upper middle-class folks profiting off of this situation. Maybe this is true for some assets, but unless I'm missing something, markets in general do not seem to be feeding off of inflation in the way you're describing here.
  - rank0 4y ago
    It’s longer term. CPI just measures a weighted prices of a basket of goods/services. In reality, the purchasing power of the dollar moves quite a bit outside the CPI basket because people absolutely spend their capital outside that basket. > I don't see a lot of upper middle-class folks profiting off of this situation. Look around more! We’ve witnessed the greatest bull market in history and It’s largely due to the government pouring trillions of dollars into securities. Look at returns on equity and real estate since QE started in ‘08. Poor people aren’t the ones benefiting off our insane 14 yr rally.
dominotw 4y ago
> What exactly is everyone so scared about that we all seem to think the economy is headed for a major recession? All the tech layoffs and hiring freezes that are happening. Whats the explanation for it if everything is fine and dandy.
AlwaysRock 4y ago
If you, like most people on hn, are in tech then you are highly insulated from the impact of a recession/downturn/whatever you want to call it. You likely make significantly more than the nation average household and your job security and prospects are likely significantly higher. I think the doom and gloom is a bit overblown too but who knows if tomorrow my company says xyz isnt looking good. Time for layoffs.
dccoolgai 4y ago
The real "reason" for this "recession" is all those stupid articles about the "great resignation". I knew as soon as those appeared the billionaire ruling class would rather cut off their own arms than allow the notion of workers getting access to some of the wealth they create. Thus: "Panic! Recession! Work harder!"
- ChadNauseam 4y ago
  Do you have any substantiation for that?
  - dccoolgai 4y ago
    You mean other than the 200 years of history since the start of the industrial revolution? Well, for starters there's the proven collusion between big tech CEOs in the very recent past to keep wages suppressed... I "suppose" it could be coincidence that the FAANG execs all came out at the same time and made a big Kabuki dance about "everyone work harder or we'll fire you"... But my money is on the square that they are colluding with each other again... Because they already proved they will do that.
pid_0 4y ago
verisimi 4y ago
I think the gloom sentiment is also no good. Life is bountiful and joyful. But I wouldn't build my case on the provided numbers. Inflation numbers, unemployment numbers are not yesterday's numbers, as in they are not derived the same way. They mean exactly what they intended to mean, for managing expectations in the present.
COGlory 4y ago
>Inflation was an issue for a while, but a lot of that seemed to be driven more by temporary supply constraints in certain sectors than any actual currency devaluation, and inflation already seems to be dying down anyway. Man, this attitude is terrible. My life and all of my colleagues lives have been completely flipped upside down by this inflation. This comment just donwplaying it as a non-issue made me really angry. How out of touch are you? I can barely afford groceries anymore. And not the organic kind - the bottom basement price chopped discount kind.
- missedthecue 4y ago
  The typical US poster on HN likely makes 3x or 4x the US national median income.
- NickM 4y ago
  I'm sorry, I meant no disrespect. I agree inflation is a very real issue, my comment only meant to question whether it's going to continue to be a long-term issue and whether it's an indicator of a broader economic downturn or not.
th1s1sit 4y ago
Because what are we working on? Amazon is running out of people willing to work in its warehouses; gig work gets old fast. Low unemployment is unsustainable if it’s unfulfilling errand running. There’s little net new invention going on in entrenched big tech; Bezos and co are riding high on mathematical inference by accountants; it’s a math scam being forced upon people who can’t “see” how he’s not really invented anything new; distributed computing under unified api; wow. Capturing eyeballs is easy when the masses are oblivious; the biological quirk religion stumbled upon is being intentionally manipulated. Except for nation state prestige, there’s little net new coming out of all these tech companies; writing apps and todo lists? Come on. Video games? 40+ years old. Better chat bots? Meh. Story mode still rules; we’re iterating on the childhood nostalgia of 70-80s kids who also happen to be the early tech boom crowd; shock. Where is the net new? We’re getting faster with higher resolution. Propping up the dollar in lock step with history. Which is why I believe all the pipe dreams about singularity and rockets to nowhere will never happen; kids growing up with these things will see sooner than the elders who were mesmerized by this stuff that it’s all “nuclear powered rocket cars” again. Generational churn is what’s creating the rocky situation politically. Society will stabilize on a “new normal” as more of the 50+ crowd dies off. And the normal the 20-30s crowd wants is progressive; they’ve not lost their desire for political change as they age into their 30s like prior generations did as inequality still controls their life; prior generations lost their progressiveness as they bought houses and had families; something even 30 year olds cannot do; the elders have monopolized having a good life. The young want to be represented by like minded people and are just waiting out the resistance. 80% of last gens Fortune 500 are gone. Electoral turnovers flush corruption and open up economic gains for public: https://www.nber.org/papers/w29766 https://www.nber.org/papers/w29766 Same will happen as the elders with monopoly on politics die. Chip companies aren’t going anywhere, but HN is a filter bubble; there’s little dedication to these stupid software companies among the young; see FB use tanking among teens. No one I know under 40 cares about Metas verse, but it was on Today the other day! They’re gaming the clueless. The veil is pierced and frankly software as an industry deserves it; most is copy-paste work while everyone else grows their potatoes.
- Sohcahtoa82 4y ago
  > Video games? 40+ years old. As a gamer, I find this is incredibly dismissive. There's still tons of new ideas in games being explored. Factorio introduced the factory building genre in 2014, and we're still seeing new takes on it. Satisfactory made it first-person and beautiful. Dyson Sphere Program made it multi-planet and interstellar. Captain of Industry made destructible and moveable terrain. The colony sim genre as we know it today did not exist 10 years ago. Now we have RimWorld, Banished, Oxygen Not Included, and more. Even puzzle games continue to innovate. Baba is You is probably the most unique puzzle game I've ever seen, and then there's all the Zachtronics games... So yeah...the product of "video games" might be 40+ years old, but it's silly to claim that there's nothing net new coming out.
TrevorJ 4y ago
Inflation is still a huge issue. The last numbers we got indicated 8% inflation. The fed target is 2%. That means that not only are people seeing huge decreases in buying power, but the fed is going to have to continue putting the hurt on the economy in order to get things back under control.
draw_down 4y ago
tmaly 4y ago
Inflation is still at 8.5% it is still an issue. Rates on 30 year conventional mortgages are extremely high compared to just a year ago. Food and energy costs which are not considered in mainline inflation figures are still very high.
Red_Leaves_Flyy 4y ago
Regular people are concerned about affording basic necessities. Supply chains are absolutely fucked. The company I work for is so effected that the folks in logistics are talking to ship captains and port managers, and we’re pretty well insulated from most of the inflation. My colleagues and I are hurt more by inflation than my company is. This inflation is wild though. Large companies are posting obscene profits while fighting labor on every front, raising prices massively (just got back the store and some items are up 300% from last month), and have taken full advantage of government subsidies. Consumers are well and truly tapped out, look at target posting a massive decline. Target’s performance is a bellwether of middle class conditions and its bleak. Walmart is also reporting a decline. Companies should have been preparing for this 6-12-36 months ago, the signs were there. Instead short-term-ism won out again in board rooms and talking heads look like a surprised pikachu trying to talk around the problems effecting consumers and the obvious solutions. People need affordable: food, housing, transportation, and healthcare. The rampant and excessive profiteering in these industries has dug a huge hole that is going to be exceptionally painful to dig out of because so many people have had their lives wasted on truly frivolous endeavors. I expect the beatings to continue until morale approves or the proletariat finds their voice. All these people you hear fear mongering are the soundtrack to the game of musical chairs playing in the economy.

by NickM 4y ago

AnEro 4y ago

Knowing people that make under 60k a year, and how harder their lives got and how hard it is to pay back loans and other obligations they where ulitmately strong armed into taking to improve their position. Not to mention how alot of western nations have a large majority of people are pay check to pay check regardless of their tax bracket. Working class is a good litmus of how the economy is doing vs S&P because speculation can ultimately make it look like everything is fine until it isn't

dtdimond 4y ago
It's always been hard for people in those income buckets. But if the question is: are we in a massive economic downturn over the past half year, it's really hard for me to look at the data and answer with a yes. One thing I'm looking at is: https://realtimeinequality.org/ https://realtimeinequality.org/ And that's showing that for the first time in over a decade, the bottom half is seeing real wage/wealth gains, even after recent inflation. Am I missing something? Because your sentiment is the more common one.
- kradeelav 4y ago
  Charts can lie. Whether or not you can buy bacon* or gas is real. *substitute with whatever staple you wish. I used bacon here since it's historically a working class' person's meat.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - Red_Leaves_Flyy 4y ago
    Bacons a funny commodity, I don’t track the futures of it but always look at the grocery store. Pre pandemic bacon was around 2-3/lb for the cheap stuff, 4/lb for quality, and 6/lb for the niche products. I’ve seen these prices double since January this year and some products are up more than 400%. If this isn’ta sure sign of a serious problem I don’t know what would be.
    - jimmygrapes 4y ago
      Purely anecdotal but I remember buying 16pz packs of bacon for 1-2 dollars (in a large California city) for awhile, then this phenomenon called "Epic Meal Time" came about and Denny's was making bacon milkshakes and the Internet zeitgeist collectively went "lmao BACON!!" and soon after I was paying 4 dollars per pound. Supply and demand, maybe, sure. In my opinion, it was just demand and marketing. NOW it's supply and demand, though.
    - Kon-Peki 4y ago
      https://beta.bls.gov/dataViewer/view/timeseries/APU0000704111 https://beta.bls.gov/dataViewer/view/timeseries/APU000070411... Government price data for bacon goes back to 1980. PS - there are other price series about bacon, including regional prices: https://beta.bls.gov/dataQuery/find?removeAll=1&q=Bacon https://beta.bls.gov/dataQuery/find?removeAll=1&q=Bacon
      - Red_Leaves_Flyy 4y ago
        Great contribution! Thank you! That website is arcane but the data is fantastic.
- throwawaylinux 4y ago
  Wages were rising at a similar rate before the covid hit. Remove that dip and continue the line and it would end up in about the same place it is now. Wealth started growing since about 2019 too.
- rdtwo 4y ago
  Yeah you are missing the fact that the bottom 50% of Americans don’t show up in economic charts or data. The wage disparity is so high that they basically become noise on most statistics. Basically if the top 10% do well then it looks like the entire country is doing great.
D13Fd 4y ago
Having debt is not the worst thing in an inflationary period. The inflation reduces the value of your debt.
- rxhernandez 4y ago
  ONLY if your wages keep up with inflation.
  - nickserv 4y ago
    Exactly. Unless of course your income is so high that day to day expenditures are basically a rounding error. Then you can profit handsomely from other people's misery. The rich get richer, the poor get poorer is particularly true during times of high inflation (so long as not catastrophic).
  - D13Fd 4y ago
    Yes, that's true. But that's like saying "ONLY if you don't lose your job" or "ONLY if you don't get hit by a train."
  - __MatrixMan__ 4y ago
    Right. And the compensation changes associated with going to a different company are almost always better than letting your current company re-evaluate your pay. So if inflation causes people to jump ship to get market-adjusted pay, you now have formerly-productive people now in FNG-mode, which is a much more impactful phenomenon than inflation on its own.
- nickserv 4y ago
  This is true for investment debt like real estate. If you're taking on debt to pay for basic necessities because salary rises don't match inflation it's an altogether different situation.
  - D13Fd 4y ago
    Yes, if you take on the debt after the inflation it does you no good. But if you take loans in 2015 dollars and repay them in 2022 dollars, you are better off in terms of repayment by having a lot of inflation during that period. It doesn't matter what purpose you took the loan for.
dionidium 4y ago
> how hard it is to pay back loans and other obligations they where ulitmately strong armed into taking to improve their position It's been a while since I've been in that income bracket, but I don't remember ever being strong-armed into taking on unnecessary debt. What are you referring to here?
- Mezzie 4y ago
  Well, the big one is college debt, obviously. But another example that comes to mind (as someone who lives in that income bracket about half by choice and half not) are car repairs (you HAVE to pony up or you lose your job, so the question becomes 'borrow 1k or lose 100% of your income'). Oh, and any time childcare is fucked up for any reason. Kid can't go to daycare/school because they're sick for a week? Parents don't get PTO, so their only option is to eat a week's worth of wages, and since income in is close to or level with expenses out, that means making it up with debt. The 'strong arming' comes in because society is set up to make those your only options. (versus having public transit to rely on, walkable cities, or cheap car rentals, for example).
- Sohcahtoa82 4y ago
  It doesn't have to be strong-arming, but what about propaganda? High schoolers are still being told "If you don't want to make minimum wage for your whole life, you need a college degree!", yet a high schooler certainly can't pay the $15K+ per year to get a degree, so they take out student loans. And then, the same people who hounded them to get a degree then hound them when they beg for student loan forgiveness, telling them they shouldn't have taken out a loan they wouldn't be able to afford to pay back. Damned if you do, damned if you don't.
  - dionidium 4y ago
    > "If you don't want to make minimum wage for your whole life, you need a college degree!" I started college in 1999. The day my freshmen year started, jokes about English majors asking if you want fries with that were already 60 years old. This argument is revisionist bunk, in other words. Everybody knows there are some degrees that are more valuable than others, that some degrees lead to higher pay and that some don't. Everybody knows this. They know it today and they knew it in 1999 and they knew it in 1979 and I categorically reject this weird, revisionist insistence that nobody could possibly have known it or that 18-year-olds are hapless dopes without any agency or even the most basic understanding of how the world works.
dublin 4y ago
We shouldn't be quite so smug. Most of what developers and other tech people do is not really needed. Nice, yeah. Required? Hell, no. Look at Facebook - they're currently the 8th most valuable company on the planet, but very few people really need what they provide, and most of their customers really don't like Facebook (and IG, etc.) and the way they know the company is manipulating them. Contrast that with a companies like Exxon or Amazon, which like them or not, produce products or services people need and want to buy. Ad markets would continue without them, and I'm already seeing companies shift marketing dollars away form digital given both poor results and waiting to see what happens. (And I'm in Austin, where things are relatively booming...) My point is simply that 80% of what we as techies do could be eliminated tomorrow, and the world would go on. The 20% remaining could (painfully) keep things going through a downturn, especially if the alternative is unemployment. If you think your company won't cut you loose if that 80% cost reduction becomes necessary due to depression-level forces, think again - you may not be so indispensable as you think, no matter your position - I've seen a couple of top-level thought leaders/innovators cut from local companies recently, something that didn't happen even in 2008! The reason is usually, "we're pulling back from investing in innovation and new product development." I've got a bad feeling about this...

hackitup7 4y ago

I feel like everyone is freaking out because we went from almost unprecedentedly high tech valuations in 2021 back to ~historical norms today, which feels bad. Example: For all of the years that I was working in SaaS between 2008 - Covid, I assumed that I should plan for a ~10x revenue multiple in the optimistic case.

sakopov 4y ago

> and inflation already seems to be dying down anyway. I̶ ̶d̶o̶n̶'̶t̶ ̶k̶n̶o̶w̶ ̶i̶f̶ ̶I̶'̶m̶ ̶t̶h̶a̶t̶ ̶o̶p̶t̶i̶m̶i̶s̶t̶i̶c̶.̶ ̶I̶ ̶t̶h̶i̶n̶k̶ ̶i̶n̶f̶l̶a̶t̶i̶o̶n̶ ̶i̶s̶ ̶s̶t̶i̶l̶l̶ ̶8̶.̶5̶%̶ ̶m̶o̶n̶t̶h̶-̶t̶o̶-̶m̶o̶n̶t̶h̶ ̶a̶n̶d̶ ̶o̶n̶l̶y̶ ̶d̶o̶w̶n̶ ̶0̶.̶6̶%̶ ̶f̶r̶o̶m̶ ̶p̶r̶e̶v̶i̶o̶u̶s̶ ̶m̶o̶n̶t̶h̶.̶ ̶W̶e̶'̶d̶ ̶n̶e̶e̶d̶ ̶s̶e̶v̶e̶r̶a̶l̶ ̶m̶o̶n̶t̶h̶s̶ ̶o̶f̶ ̶d̶r̶o̶p̶s̶ ̶t̶o̶ ̶c̶o̶n̶c̶l̶u̶d̶e̶ ̶t̶h̶a̶t̶ ̶i̶n̶f̶l̶a̶t̶i̶o̶n̶ ̶i̶s̶ ̶e̶a̶s̶i̶n̶g̶.̶ ̶I̶ ̶p̶e̶r̶s̶o̶n̶a̶l̶l̶y̶ ̶d̶o̶n̶'̶t̶ ̶s̶e̶e̶ ̶a̶n̶y̶ ̶p̶r̶i̶c̶e̶ ̶d̶r̶o̶p̶s̶ ̶o̶n̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶t̶h̶i̶n̶g̶s̶ ̶I̶ ̶a̶c̶t̶u̶a̶l̶l̶y̶ ̶u̶s̶e̶ ̶-̶ ̶f̶o̶o̶d̶,̶ ̶g̶a̶s̶ ̶a̶n̶d̶ ̶h̶o̶u̶s̶i̶n̶g̶.̶ ̶A̶l̶l̶ ̶r̶e̶m̶a̶i̶n̶ ̶s̶i̶g̶n̶i̶f̶i̶c̶a̶n̶t̶l̶y̶ ̶e̶l̶e̶v̶a̶t̶e̶d̶ ̶i̶n̶ ̶c̶o̶m̶p̶a̶r̶i̶s̶o̶n̶ ̶t̶o̶ ̶a̶ ̶y̶e̶a̶r̶ ̶a̶g̶o̶.̶

jeffbee 4y ago
You're not ever going to see long-term, broad price drops. That would be deflation. Your statement appears highly misleading, as if you don't understand the topic. Prices (in the U.S.) did not rise at all in July, so it's not clear what you could mean by "8.5% month-to-month" which, as stated, would be a spectacular and unprecedented rate. The month-over-month inflation in July was none. Prices rose 8.5% vs. year-ago.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- sakopov 4y ago
  You're right. I don't know what I'm talking about.

nathanyz 4y ago

I think many of the impacts to the economy from inflation and interest rate increases take time before we see the full picture. For example, the housing market seemed to still be hot even with increased rates, but that is because of the delay from sales to closings. Last month started showing decreases in sales in areas that were previously on fire. And anecdotally, listings in my area that would have sold in 1 day above the listed price which are currently still on market with multiple price cuts. The other big factor that is lingering are the student loan repayments which have been deferred for now. That is a huge chunk of monthly expense if/when they are reinstated which will have an impact on discretionary spending, etc.

Izkata 4y ago

> We're at extremely low unemployment Back in 2018/2019, when I got curious and looked at what signals people look at for recessions, too low unemployment was one of them.

nchi3 4y ago
What's the reasoning for this?
- michael1999 4y ago
  Because the US Fed will cause a recession to resist wage inflation.
- rdtwo 4y ago
  It indicates an overheated economy

hartator 4y ago

> What exactly is everyone so scared about that we all seem to think the economy is headed for a major recession? The economy seems to be doing well in 2019 dollars. However you have to take account that almost 2x more money have been printed since then. And if you divide all our numbers by 2, we are already in an economic disaster.

estomagordo 4y ago
Surely you're not saying that anyone who has the same riches today as compared to 3 years ago is, in fact, half as rich?
- hartator 4y ago
  If you consider money should be rare right now not plentiful, I think it’s an accurate way to look at economics.
  - conductr 4y ago
    It does however take time for all the prices to go to 2x what they were. If we end up having 7 years of 10% inflation we will be there. Had this hypothetical person still just held onto their cash, they’ll be half as rich as they were in terms that matter (purchasing power). I for one would not be surprised at all if that’s what we’re in for.

felipellrocha 4y ago

I think you know the answer: > The recent interest rate hikes also didn't seem to have nearly as much impact on the markets as everyone feared they would. Markets aren’t rational

colinmhayes 4y ago
I think the markets have been far more rational with regards to rate hikes than you are giving them credit for. It's looking like the rate hikes were priced in back in early spring, and since they've actually been slower than expected the market has experienced a bit of a bounce back. Month over month inflation was 0 last month. We're obviously not out of the woods here, but consumer demand is dropping along with oil prices which seems to be leading the fed to believe that they may only need one more sub 1% hike in early fall. That would be much better than the doom scenarios everyone was talking about 6 months ago.
hpkuarg 4y ago
And, as we all know, they will remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent.
__MatrixMan__ 4y ago
How can you be sure? Maybe they're just acting according to a rationality that humans don't understand.
- conductr 4y ago
  Or humans aren’t rational so neither are markets

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

rank0 4y ago

I think it’s easy to miss some of the very real pain lower income folks are experiencing right now if you’re not in their bracket. Inflation causes excess capital to flow into assets, which the poor don’t have and HN commenters do. The inflation issue is absolutely not solved. A single month from 9.1 -> 8.6 is FAR too soon for victory. I suspect the recent rally in the market comes from the assumption that the Fed will back off and that we have indeed already experienced peak inflation. CPI of 8.6 is still unacceptable and my guess is we’re gonna see more rate hikes and QT than the markets expect. That’ll mean mortgage rates go up, companies will have more difficulty servicing debt…etc We’re not in the clear quite yet!

Negitivefrags 4y ago
The move from 9.1 to 8.6 is due to a single month of zero. People forget that 11/12th of the data for the yearly number already happened when they see the new number each month. It’s not impossible that inflation is just 0% from here on out and yet it will still take a while for the yearly number to come down.
NickM 4y ago
I mean, I don't want to discount that many people are suffering, but real income growth for the bottom 50% of earners has gone up substantially over the last year (and, notably, have gone up more than for high-earners, percentage-wise). Rising prices are bad and all, but if wages go up more than prices, as they seem to have done, then on aggregate people should be doing better, not worse. Inflation causes excess capital to flow into assets, which the poor don’t have and HN commenters do. I'm not sure I agree with this, as inflation seems to have scared markets off of their peaks. I mean, they're not down that far, but I don't see a lot of upper middle-class folks profiting off of this situation. Maybe this is true for some assets, but unless I'm missing something, markets in general do not seem to be feeding off of inflation in the way you're describing here.
- rank0 4y ago
  It’s longer term. CPI just measures a weighted prices of a basket of goods/services. In reality, the purchasing power of the dollar moves quite a bit outside the CPI basket because people absolutely spend their capital outside that basket. > I don't see a lot of upper middle-class folks profiting off of this situation. Look around more! We’ve witnessed the greatest bull market in history and It’s largely due to the government pouring trillions of dollars into securities. Look at returns on equity and real estate since QE started in ‘08. Poor people aren’t the ones benefiting off our insane 14 yr rally.

dominotw 4y ago

> What exactly is everyone so scared about that we all seem to think the economy is headed for a major recession? All the tech layoffs and hiring freezes that are happening. Whats the explanation for it if everything is fine and dandy.

AlwaysRock 4y ago

If you, like most people on hn, are in tech then you are highly insulated from the impact of a recession/downturn/whatever you want to call it. You likely make significantly more than the nation average household and your job security and prospects are likely significantly higher. I think the doom and gloom is a bit overblown too but who knows if tomorrow my company says xyz isnt looking good. Time for layoffs.

dccoolgai 4y ago

The real "reason" for this "recession" is all those stupid articles about the "great resignation". I knew as soon as those appeared the billionaire ruling class would rather cut off their own arms than allow the notion of workers getting access to some of the wealth they create. Thus: "Panic! Recession! Work harder!"

ChadNauseam 4y ago
Do you have any substantiation for that?
- dccoolgai 4y ago
  You mean other than the 200 years of history since the start of the industrial revolution? Well, for starters there's the proven collusion between big tech CEOs in the very recent past to keep wages suppressed... I "suppose" it could be coincidence that the FAANG execs all came out at the same time and made a big Kabuki dance about "everyone work harder or we'll fire you"... But my money is on the square that they are colluding with each other again... Because they already proved they will do that.

pid_0 4y ago

verisimi 4y ago

I think the gloom sentiment is also no good. Life is bountiful and joyful. But I wouldn't build my case on the provided numbers. Inflation numbers, unemployment numbers are not yesterday's numbers, as in they are not derived the same way. They mean exactly what they intended to mean, for managing expectations in the present.

COGlory 4y ago

>Inflation was an issue for a while, but a lot of that seemed to be driven more by temporary supply constraints in certain sectors than any actual currency devaluation, and inflation already seems to be dying down anyway. Man, this attitude is terrible. My life and all of my colleagues lives have been completely flipped upside down by this inflation. This comment just donwplaying it as a non-issue made me really angry. How out of touch are you? I can barely afford groceries anymore. And not the organic kind - the bottom basement price chopped discount kind.

missedthecue 4y ago
The typical US poster on HN likely makes 3x or 4x the US national median income.
NickM 4y ago
I'm sorry, I meant no disrespect. I agree inflation is a very real issue, my comment only meant to question whether it's going to continue to be a long-term issue and whether it's an indicator of a broader economic downturn or not.

th1s1sit 4y ago

Because what are we working on? Amazon is running out of people willing to work in its warehouses; gig work gets old fast. Low unemployment is unsustainable if it’s unfulfilling errand running. There’s little net new invention going on in entrenched big tech; Bezos and co are riding high on mathematical inference by accountants; it’s a math scam being forced upon people who can’t “see” how he’s not really invented anything new; distributed computing under unified api; wow. Capturing eyeballs is easy when the masses are oblivious; the biological quirk religion stumbled upon is being intentionally manipulated. Except for nation state prestige, there’s little net new coming out of all these tech companies; writing apps and todo lists? Come on. Video games? 40+ years old. Better chat bots? Meh. Story mode still rules; we’re iterating on the childhood nostalgia of 70-80s kids who also happen to be the early tech boom crowd; shock. Where is the net new? We’re getting faster with higher resolution. Propping up the dollar in lock step with history. Which is why I believe all the pipe dreams about singularity and rockets to nowhere will never happen; kids growing up with these things will see sooner than the elders who were mesmerized by this stuff that it’s all “nuclear powered rocket cars” again. Generational churn is what’s creating the rocky situation politically. Society will stabilize on a “new normal” as more of the 50+ crowd dies off. And the normal the 20-30s crowd wants is progressive; they’ve not lost their desire for political change as they age into their 30s like prior generations did as inequality still controls their life; prior generations lost their progressiveness as they bought houses and had families; something even 30 year olds cannot do; the elders have monopolized having a good life. The young want to be represented by like minded people and are just waiting out the resistance. 80% of last gens Fortune 500 are gone. Electoral turnovers flush corruption and open up economic gains for public: https://www.nber.org/papers/w29766 https://www.nber.org/papers/w29766 Same will happen as the elders with monopoly on politics die. Chip companies aren’t going anywhere, but HN is a filter bubble; there’s little dedication to these stupid software companies among the young; see FB use tanking among teens. No one I know under 40 cares about Metas verse, but it was on Today the other day! They’re gaming the clueless. The veil is pierced and frankly software as an industry deserves it; most is copy-paste work while everyone else grows their potatoes.

Sohcahtoa82 4y ago
> Video games? 40+ years old. As a gamer, I find this is incredibly dismissive. There's still tons of new ideas in games being explored. Factorio introduced the factory building genre in 2014, and we're still seeing new takes on it. Satisfactory made it first-person and beautiful. Dyson Sphere Program made it multi-planet and interstellar. Captain of Industry made destructible and moveable terrain. The colony sim genre as we know it today did not exist 10 years ago. Now we have RimWorld, Banished, Oxygen Not Included, and more. Even puzzle games continue to innovate. Baba is You is probably the most unique puzzle game I've ever seen, and then there's all the Zachtronics games... So yeah...the product of "video games" might be 40+ years old, but it's silly to claim that there's nothing net new coming out.

TrevorJ 4y ago

Inflation is still a huge issue. The last numbers we got indicated 8% inflation. The fed target is 2%. That means that not only are people seeing huge decreases in buying power, but the fed is going to have to continue putting the hurt on the economy in order to get things back under control.

draw_down 4y ago

tmaly 4y ago

Inflation is still at 8.5% it is still an issue. Rates on 30 year conventional mortgages are extremely high compared to just a year ago. Food and energy costs which are not considered in mainline inflation figures are still very high.

Red_Leaves_Flyy 4y ago

Regular people are concerned about affording basic necessities. Supply chains are absolutely fucked. The company I work for is so effected that the folks in logistics are talking to ship captains and port managers, and we’re pretty well insulated from most of the inflation. My colleagues and I are hurt more by inflation than my company is. This inflation is wild though. Large companies are posting obscene profits while fighting labor on every front, raising prices massively (just got back the store and some items are up 300% from last month), and have taken full advantage of government subsidies. Consumers are well and truly tapped out, look at target posting a massive decline. Target’s performance is a bellwether of middle class conditions and its bleak. Walmart is also reporting a decline. Companies should have been preparing for this 6-12-36 months ago, the signs were there. Instead short-term-ism won out again in board rooms and talking heads look like a surprised pikachu trying to talk around the problems effecting consumers and the obvious solutions. People need affordable: food, housing, transportation, and healthcare. The rampant and excessive profiteering in these industries has dug a huge hole that is going to be exceptionally painful to dig out of because so many people have had their lives wasted on truly frivolous endeavors. I expect the beatings to continue until morale approves or the proletariat finds their voice. All these people you hear fear mongering are the soundtrack to the game of musical chairs playing in the economy.