4 ms·

Yeah, it's not just eggs. My grocery bill has definitely been greatly outpacing the official inflation figures, which are already high. Double or triple that ra

Yeah, it's not just eggs. My grocery bill has definitely been greatly outpacing the official inflation figures, which are already high. Double or triple that rate, I'd say.

SV_BubbleTime 4y ago
How could we tell if the published inflation rate was just completely bullshit?
- RosanaAnaDana 4y ago
  Write an app for people to submit receipts and open publish the data. Maybe some ocr/ml stuff to help.
  - NineStarPoint 4y ago
    Question is how you get people who aren’t seeing large price increases to join such an app. It’s easy to imagine a world where only the people above the mean in inflation search something like that out, giving off a false impression of numbers being cooked by institutions that use more complete methods.
    - RosanaAnaDana 4y ago
      Just have to add a bit of value in some way. For example, if I could just take a picture of my receipt after shopping, and a 'budget' is filled out for me automatically, so I can track my spending, I'd use the hell out of that. Doesn't have to be much if a value add. Just something.
- yamtaddle 4y ago
  I dunno what else is in the bucket they use to calculate it. Maybe that other stuff is cheap (TVs? Furniture? Other stuff I don't need to buy all the time, I suppose?). I've always felt like grocery costs were going up quite a bit faster than inflation, since I started shopping for my own groceries in the early '00s. Like, they definitely weren't rising at merely 2-3%/yr in the pre-Covid years. It's just super-painful now because the increases are so extreme.
- HDThoreaun 4y ago
  It's a transparent process. Go to the BLS website and see if the prices they're reporting don't match with what you're seeing.
RosanaAnaDana 4y ago
I should look it up in my notes, but afai can detect, we're just getting gouged to hell. Fed claims on flour prices: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/APU0000701111 https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/APU0000701111

Yeah, it's not just eggs. My grocery bill has definitely been greatly outpacing the official inflation figures, which are already high. Double or triple that rate, I'd say.

SV_BubbleTime 4y ago

How could we tell if the published inflation rate was just completely bullshit?

RosanaAnaDana 4y ago
Write an app for people to submit receipts and open publish the data. Maybe some ocr/ml stuff to help.
- NineStarPoint 4y ago
  Question is how you get people who aren’t seeing large price increases to join such an app. It’s easy to imagine a world where only the people above the mean in inflation search something like that out, giving off a false impression of numbers being cooked by institutions that use more complete methods.
  - RosanaAnaDana 4y ago
    Just have to add a bit of value in some way. For example, if I could just take a picture of my receipt after shopping, and a 'budget' is filled out for me automatically, so I can track my spending, I'd use the hell out of that. Doesn't have to be much if a value add. Just something.
yamtaddle 4y ago
I dunno what else is in the bucket they use to calculate it. Maybe that other stuff is cheap (TVs? Furniture? Other stuff I don't need to buy all the time, I suppose?). I've always felt like grocery costs were going up quite a bit faster than inflation, since I started shopping for my own groceries in the early '00s. Like, they definitely weren't rising at merely 2-3%/yr in the pre-Covid years. It's just super-painful now because the increases are so extreme.
HDThoreaun 4y ago
It's a transparent process. Go to the BLS website and see if the prices they're reporting don't match with what you're seeing.

RosanaAnaDana 4y ago

I should look it up in my notes, but afai can detect, we're just getting gouged to hell. Fed claims on flour prices: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/APU0000701111 https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/APU0000701111