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"You still owe the same amount of money but now everything is more expensive so technically the debt is lower" is a hell of a take. Real wages went up briefly

by bko 3y ago

"You still owe the same amount of money but now everything is more expensive so technically the debt is lower" is a hell of a take. Real wages went up briefly but then inflation caught up and brought real wages back down to pre-covid levels. So I guess real wages are the same but went up nominally so the debt is lower but displaced with new debt. In my experience the inflation numbers are way off. For instance, take food: > The food-at-home (grocery store or supermarket food purchases) CPI increased 0.1 percent from March 2023 to April 2023 and was 7.1 percent higher than April 2022; [1] Does anyone believe that 7% YoY number? It's not like I was buying ground beef for $4 a pound and now its $4.28 a pound. It's more like prices went up from $4 to $5.50 a pound [0] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LES1252881600Q https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LES1252881600Q [1] https://www.ers.usda.gov/data-products/food-price-outlook/summary-findings/ https://www.ers.usda.gov/data-products/food-price-outlook/su...

bequanna 3y ago
> Does anyone believe that 7% YoY number? I’ve never dug into the methodology but it makes no intuitive sense and seems far too low. Almost everything I buy is 40-50% more expensive than pre pandemic.
- beej71 3y ago
  What I've noticed in my town is that the cheap employee-owned grocery store on that side of the tracks has had the same prices for years. But the stores on the other have increased their prices significantly, charging what the market will bear.
reaperman 3y ago
> "a hell of a take." This is extremely non-generous to my post. I was very careful to say that it would be different for each individual, and tied to their personal earnings. We might disagree on whether the average student-loan borrower's earnings probably went up or probably went down, but it's not "a hell of a take".

by bko 3y ago

bequanna 3y ago

> Does anyone believe that 7% YoY number? I’ve never dug into the methodology but it makes no intuitive sense and seems far too low. Almost everything I buy is 40-50% more expensive than pre pandemic.

beej71 3y ago
What I've noticed in my town is that the cheap employee-owned grocery store on that side of the tracks has had the same prices for years. But the stores on the other have increased their prices significantly, charging what the market will bear.

reaperman 3y ago

> "a hell of a take." This is extremely non-generous to my post. I was very careful to say that it would be different for each individual, and tied to their personal earnings. We might disagree on whether the average student-loan borrower's earnings probably went up or probably went down, but it's not "a hell of a take".