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The USA Inflation Rate by Truflation Is 4.21%
- givemeethekeys 4y agoThats still 2 more than 2.
- arcticbull 4y agoI mean yeah, but the trajectory is kind of more important.
- coolestguy 4y agoWhich is in itself a made up number to aim for
- CoolestBeans 4y ago2% is an arbitrary target. According to Volcker in his autobiography its has its origins in an offhand comment in a news story from then RBNZ governor during a bout with inflation that they would be happy if they brought inflation down to about 2%.
- newaccount2023 4y agononetheless it is also the number Powell has suggested repeatedly as his target
- mkl95 4y agoYou want to look for a rate of change here. Inflation is significantly lower than a few weeks ago.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- wfeefwfwe 4y ago[flagged]
- 0xDEF 4y agoThe US government claims it's 6.0%. What does the US government gain by reporting a higher inflation rate?
- arcticbull 4y agoThere's a lot of different ways to measure inflation. This is based on their own methodology and white paper (https://truflation.com/methodology/ https://truflation.com/methodology/) which I have yet to review. It's almost certainly not "something to gain" but instead just different weights, different sources, different approach.
- ghayes 4y agoTheoretically isn’t the 2% target based on the BLS numbers for inflation? Thus, if we wanted to compare, the “Truflation target” might be more like 1% then? It’s weird to change the method but keep the arbitrary target.
- jfengel 4y agoThe 2% target is rather arbitrary, and is independent of the measurement method. Both the target and all of the metrics are trying to capture the intuitive, handwavey notion of "a healthy economy". So they don't put too much stress on that 2% number. If the number were at 1.9% or 2.1%, they'd assume it's all in the margin of error. If it gets below 1% or above 4% for a while, they apply some tools in the direction of 2%, but not trying to overshoot.
- arcticbull 4y agoYeah, something something Philips Curve. [1] [1] https://www.stlouisfed.org/open-vault/2020/january/what-is-phillips-curve-why-flattened https://www.stlouisfed.org/open-vault/2020/january/what-is-p...
- jfengel 4y agoThe government's goal is to use the same metric repeatedly. It doesn't matter whether it's higher or lower than some other metric. They only care about how it is compared to last month and last year, so they can make decisions about next month and next year. They know that 6% is too high, so they'll keep trying to push inflation down. They'd do roughly the same if it were 4%; the margins of error are too large to distinguish. If the number were 1% that would raise eyebrows, and you'd wonder if one metric or the other was a failure. Same if the number were 15%. But no economist is worrying too much about somebody else going "... but it's really 4%". Especially if they don't have a track record for that number.
- mkl95 4y agoIt was 4.04% on Sunday. Any idea why it has increased by 0.17% ever since?
- Invictus0 4y agoFrom the whitepaper: > We propose using the world’s vast data access, blockchain technology, and the enormous potential of decentralized systems and organizations to provide a developer solution to the inflation problem. > Truflation is the first true US inflation index based on the independent data sources and metrics created by developers and crypto investors for developers and the crypto community. > The US Truflation Index is available online, on-chain, via a Chainlink Oracle API for all the crypto products and projects that want to correct for the actual US inflation. The Truflation feed also provides daily updates as opposed to the monthly metrics reported by the US government. Truflation also allows transparent access to our underlying data and calculation methods. It would be nice to get access to a small sample of the data points they're pulling, it's not immediately clear to me from their methodology what the data looks like or where the data is from.
- galago 4y agoYeah, if anyone can find any information about the source of the data that would be useful. They can say they're transparent over and over again, but that doesn't necessarily make it so. Also, if they're selling their information as a commercial service, their bias has to be taken into account as well.
- latchkey 4y agoIt is on-chain, there is no fee to use it. It was funded by winning a $100k grant from Chainlink. https://whitepaper.truflation.com/background/what-is-truflation https://whitepaper.truflation.com/background/what-is-truflat...
- dragonwriter 4y ago> “data sources and metrics created by developers and crypto investors” I... if I had to name groups of people I would not trust to build data sources and metrics for broad economic measures, “developers” and “crypto investors” would both be very close to the top.
- latchkey 4y ago
- echelon 4y agoBig delta from the Fed's number. Much more promising. It might give the Fed a little bit of wiggle room in dealing with the banking situation. If we can weather these last few blips, we might be back to smooth sailing soon. The economy is buzzing along by all other measures.
- nostrademons 4y agoI'm pretty sure the Fed is not looking at Truflation. If you want to predict Fed movements, your best bet is probably the Core PCE: https://www.bea.gov/data/personal-consumption-expenditures-price-index-excluding-food-and-energy https://www.bea.gov/data/personal-consumption-expenditures-p...
- jarsin 4y agoThe feds view is using lagging data. Truflation is using realtime data. This is why the fed gets it wrong both ways. Truflation says the housing data the fed uses is 9 months behind them.
- nostrademons 4y agoNo argument there, but OP's point was that the Truflation stats might give the Fed more wiggle room, since they're significantly lower than official CPI figures. Not if the Fed neither looks at nor gives any credence to the Truflation numbers. The Fed will continue to use lagging data and continue to make decisions that harm the economy. (FWIW, the Fed does look at a variety of data sources, and the lag in housing numbers is well known to them. However, y'know who also uses lagging data when setting prices? Real estate agents. Comps usually go back a year or so, and anything sold in that time period is fair game. Y'know who else? Employees, when figuring out how much of an annual raise is fair. And so the Fed's decision-making process isn't strictly incorrect; if they don't hold rates high enough to actually see the inflation numbers go down, then the firms who set prices also aren't going to see the numbers go down when deciding how much to ask for.)
- Sad90sNerd 4y agoThere is no way that matches reality, where does the person publishing such a chart even live? Do they buy eggs or pay rent? Here is a real alternative - John William's shadow stats. He simply measures inflation as the government used to in the 80s and 70s, and surprise surprise its more like 10% or 14% - no phony "Owner's equivalent rent". http://www.shadowstats.com/alternate_data/inflation-charts http://www.shadowstats.com/alternate_data/inflation-charts
- tenebrisalietum 4y agoThings other than inflation can cause prices of specific XYZ to rise. Wasn't there some bird flu thing that constrained the egg supply? Rent and housing costs were going up before the pandemic. Add this to the existing inflation and it's bad, esp. for housing costs.
- fooker 4y agoYou have cause and effect inverted in your argument. The specific reasons sum up to cause inflation, not the other way round.
- Sad90sNerd 4y agoOk, if you were the government and I asked you to measure rent increases - what would you do? Would you look at the cost of renting on average in a city and compare them to last years? Seems like the most obvious way... Well, that is not how the government does it now. It currently uses a metric called "owner's equivalent rent". Where instead they call up people who own there houses and ask them how much they would rent it for. It is essentially a survey instead of hard data. This has the effect of hugely underestimating the value of housing - and thats just housing! Lets talk about measuring food prices, well according to the US government you can have "substitutions". If you think measuring the price of steak is as easy as comparing the number between the years you'd be wrong again, because what they currently do is say "well people are really buying ground beef instead of steak so well use those prices instead". What's next substituting in dog food? Thats not even to mention "hedonic adjustments"... When the government relies on a statistic for policy it stops becoming a reliable statistic because the incentive is just too high to not manipulate the numbers
- baxtr 4y agoThis makes sense. It has been one years since the war started which was the leading cause of inflation. Now with the first year passed, we compare today’s prices to after war prices a year ago, which were already high. I’m expecting the rate go down further the next months. EDIT: of course I’m not suggesting inflation started on the day bullets started flying. Things were heating up before with Russia slowing down exports strategically well ahead of time and tensions were on the rise for some time.
- bboygravity 4y agoThat reasoning makes no sense at all to me: interest rates are about to be lowered again, to save the banking system again. By flooding it with new money from the FED. Again. How is that going to make inflation go down? You ain't seen nothing yet. Hyperinflation is coming.
- lend000 4y ago> the war started which was the leading cause of inflation. Inflation was 7.5% and trending upwards a month before the invasion, so your supposition is incorrect [0]. [0] https://www.bls.gov/regions/mid-atlantic/data/consumerpriceindexhistorical_us_table.htm https://www.bls.gov/regions/mid-atlantic/data/consumerpricei...
- theRealMe 4y agoInflation was here before the war started. Inflation hit 5.0% in May of 2021. It was already 7.9% in Feb of 2022 when the war started.
- spaceman_2020 4y agoWell, that certainly hasn't reflected in the UK's inflation rates. Up to 10.4% this month.
- modo_mario 4y agoThe war is a factor but a lot smaller than people seem to think it is. I think it was the OECD showing a larger part in the UK, France and such is demand driven, monetary policy and such with supply chain issues also being a factor but faaar from entirely something we can chalk up to the war. Keep in mind Europe is more affected by the war's disruption, energy issues, etc
- paxys 4y agoWhat exactly is "Truflation", and why should I give them any more credence than the hundreds/thousands of other independent economic analyses out there?
- PragmaticPulp 4y ago> Truflation is the first true US inflation index based on the independent data sources and metrics created by developers and crypto investors for developers and the crypto community. I gave up before I could find details about their sources. Too many Blockchain Buzzwords to invest much time into reading more.
- fullshark 4y agoI tried to find the actual sources and failed, all I could see was: > we are sourcing from as many daily price providers as we can while others updates once a week or once a month. No information about who the price providers are, and the coverage these higher frequency data streams provide v. what they use traditional BLS inflation sources for.
- mnd999 4y agoThe UK rate is scary. And probably about right. This country is fucked.
- chippiewill 4y agoTheir data for the UK looks very suspect when you start to break down by category
- jollyllama 4y agoOk, but what if you zoom out 5 or ten years? Or as far as the historical data set allows?
- m3kw9 4y agoThe white paper smells of many crypto white papers I’ve seen, vague, almost intentionally.
- ak_111 4y agoIt is very difficult to measure "true" inflation when most of it is hidden in decline of quality of services or shirnkflation (the latter is a bit easier to track). For example, the restaurant who still offer you the same price for the meal but now clean the toilets and cutlery 80% less frequently than they did two years ago (to save on dishwasher energy cost, or recruiting 20% less cleaner hours). Or the school that charges you the same fee although they have quietly increased the student to teacher ratio. I am wondering what is the current stat of the art to capture such hidden inflation, I guess you can track reviews to see if there is an uptick in negative reviews but then this is hard to translate quantitatively into how much it is contributing to inflation.
- onlyrealcuzzo 4y ago> I am wondering what is the current stat of the art to capture such hidden inflation The Fed's measure of inflation is supposed to include this.
- ak_111 4y agohow do they track/quantify decline in service quality as in the two scenarios I mentioned (restaurant cleaning less?)
- gruez 4y agoexample: https://www.bls.gov/cpi/quality-adjustment/new-vehicles.pdf https://www.bls.gov/cpi/quality-adjustment/new-vehicles.pdf Also, it's not active for all categories. In the restaurant example from the parent post, it wouldn't be counted because that category has no quality adjustment applied. https://www.bls.gov/cpi/quality-adjustment/ https://www.bls.gov/cpi/quality-adjustment/
- tasuki 4y agoHas anyone ever cared about 1 week or 1 month of history? I care about 10 years or 100 years, options which are conspicuously missing.
- pengaru 4y agoPre-pandemic I was considering getting this[0] gateleg table from IKEA, it was $199. I passed on it, then the pandemic hit. In 2021 I decided I wanted to get the table and it was permanently out of stock because Pandemic, but still $199 on the site. Because of its unavailability I ended up polling the site periodically, noting the price. Consequently this object became one of my reference points for pricing throughout the pandemic. As the price steadily rose, friends I'd mention it to would call out the lumber industry problems as why it's going up. Well, as far as I can tell we're well past those lumber issues, and the price has only gone up further since... 10/2021: $199 11/2021: $229 4/2022: $259 6/2022: $279 10/2022: $299 2/2023: $319 3/2023: $349 +75.37% [0] https://www.ikea.com/us/en/p/norden-gateleg-table-birch-90423887/ https://www.ikea.com/us/en/p/norden-gateleg-table-birch-9042...
- PragmaticPulp 4y agoFurniture prices went way up during the pandemic. People were staying home more and spending less on going out. Budgets went toward improving homes. Furniture was out of stock everywhere. Companies raised prices but demand continued, so they kept raising.
- jonas21 4y agoYour reference point on inflation is one quirky piece of furniture sold by a single retailer?
- pengaru 4y ago> Your reference point on inflation is one quirky piece of furniture sold by a single retailer? ... "one of" ... "The IKEA Norden gateleg table has been one of IKEA’s best sellers for a while, and it’s for good reason." [0] I fail to see how this is a "quirky piece of furniture". Judging by the frequency they appear on CL and how many of my personal contacts either had one or knew family/friends having one, I can believe the above quote regarding its best-seller status. They're quite common. [0] https://www.houszed.com/ikea-norden-gateleg-table-hack/ https://www.houszed.com/ikea-norden-gateleg-table-hack/
- antisthenes 4y agoAny measure that reports inflation UNDER US Govt official numbers is a crock of shit. Even the official rate is vastly underestimated. 4% is a joke.