4 ms·

Didn't the US have 10% inflation for 2 years. That's a 20% reduction in everyone's real cash balances. Imagine if you had $100k savings in the bank and you wer

by nomilk 3y ago

Didn't the US have 10% inflation for 2 years. That's a 20% reduction in everyone's real cash balances. Imagine if you had $100k savings in the bank and you were suddenly required to pay a once-off tax of $20k paid off over 2 years. There'd be riots. It's the same thing administered differently.

brianwawok 3y ago
That is a bit of an exaggeration. https://www.usinflationcalculator.com/inflation/current-inflation-rates/ https://www.usinflationcalculator.com/inflation/current-infl... 4.7% in 2021 8% in 2022 4%????? in 2023. if normal is about 2%.. we are looking at something like 11% "extra" inflation over 3 years. Which isn't nothing, but isn't 20%.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- lotsofpulp 3y ago
  It depends on what assets you were expecting to buy. If you already owned land, did not need daycare, locked into low property taxes by law, did not need to spend for higher education/certifications/etc, yes. If you were expecting to buy a home with certain qualities in a certain location, then you might have experienced a loss (in terms of material expectations of quality of life) worth tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of dollars during the last few years.
- KurnReeser 3y ago
  Your numbers leave out fuel/utilities and rent/housing increases. I can tell you that I kept every receipt, virtual and paper, starting July 1st 2021 and going through December 31st 2022. Running the numbers in March when I got around to it: My cost of living (with my lifestyle not changing!) went up 20.94% over those 18 months. It's gone up more since then but I don't know exactly how much - say, 5%-10% Our economy is "doing fine" because we've printed and spent 10 trillion dollars. That bill will come due, along with the bill for the other 20 trillion dollars we've printed and spent over the previous 20 years. If you're over 65 and live an average lifespan all this won't matter much to you. If you're under 45 and middle class (or lower down) you'll never retire, but your grand-kids might.
  - P_I_Staker 3y ago
    > If you're under 45 and middle class (or lower down) you'll never retire, but your grand-kids might. This seems like scare mongering. Especially for people under ~35, that would likely be able to ride out economic problems. Not everyone has all their money in cash, lol. On top of investments, lots of middle class people own their house by age 50, and you can retire quite more easily with a paid for house. It also seems to me that these labor shortages aren't going away. There may be an ups and downs, but I'd be very surprised to go another 20 years without a covid-like jobs shortage, where businesses didn't seem fazed to throw money and benefits at the problem. An economic downturn isn't even really needed in the aftermath, or excessive inflation. We've had times where the average joe has prospered. Lots of really wonky things were done in the economy to cause COL increases. We gassed up the real estate market for very little reason. That's a big driver of the inflation, or especially cost of living. Also, it seems that there are market forces that caused the inflation in cost of products. I think cost of living can go down without deflation, but I could be wrong. If companies are overcharging, that could leave room in the market. It's already eroded their position, since many products are now similar in cost to premium products, yet lower quality.
0xDEF 3y ago
Dear lord, we should be thanking the gods that libertarian techbros are not running the economy.
- Melting_Harps 3y ago
  > Dear lord, we should be thanking the gods that libertarian techbros are not running the economy. Last I remember they were though, all the VC money (things that keep the US relevant outside of military) were in the hands of a few who have been techo-bro'ing it up with scams like NFT and AI (via LLMs) as the next big savior of the economy. When in reality this comes down to a very simple distortion of monetary policy that as someone said has never really equated to more than Ivy league Astronomy and tea leaf reading by way of the Federal Reserve; who have admitted they do not know how to solve this at all. Which if you see is clear as they are raising interest rates when the debt to GDP ratio has been over 100% even before COVID, which means we can never pay it off. Lastly, I want this to happen now; you people have lived so far outside of reality that unless this starts to affect you directly you will never consider an alternative: not only are fiat monetary systems doomed, but unless we get serious about building an exit from this we might have to deal with not just climate change, and warfare all at the same time, but if left to the nation-state model we are currently on, a Global ruinous monetary system in a multi-polar World where the quality of Life is so bad that people's desperation gets to levels only seen in sub-Sahara Africa or the Middle East. That is a volatile mix that in theory we have never really diverted from since 2008. If tech workers here proudly boast here about only really doing like 10 hours of actual work, and browsing HN all day than I should hope that by now you realize why that was a fool's errand and apply your efforts accordingly as this cannot be solved otherwise. This isn't about being a 'doomer,' hell I wish I was wrong about all of this but including the war in Ukraine I'm going on 5 of 5 predictions so far. My last one is based on the notion that if you are a millennial or younger all you've been exposed to is this perpetual grift and they wonder why the life expectancy has fallen, along with quality of Life and the biggest cause of death in the US for this age group is now overdose from Fentanyl. If the goal was to see a drastic drop in population like in Japan's post bubble economy than mission accomplished, but if it was to some how finding a way to motivate people to become multi-planetary or some other lofty goal, most couldn't care less because they see everything from the lens of 'we will just fuck things up there like we did here.' And that is what I'm seeing from Gen Z, they are so apathetic and perhaps rightly so, that I don't know what will get them motivated until it's too late.
icedchai 3y ago
All assets were also inflated. Anyone who stayed invested in something reasonable (example, S&P index fund) is up at least 40% since 2020, so it all works out. People who invested aggressively have done way better obviously. We’re single digit percent away from the 2021 high.

by nomilk 3y ago

brianwawok 3y ago

That is a bit of an exaggeration. https://www.usinflationcalculator.com/inflation/current-inflation-rates/ https://www.usinflationcalculator.com/inflation/current-infl... 4.7% in 2021 8% in 2022 4%????? in 2023. if normal is about 2%.. we are looking at something like 11% "extra" inflation over 3 years. Which isn't nothing, but isn't 20%.

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
lotsofpulp 3y ago
It depends on what assets you were expecting to buy. If you already owned land, did not need daycare, locked into low property taxes by law, did not need to spend for higher education/certifications/etc, yes. If you were expecting to buy a home with certain qualities in a certain location, then you might have experienced a loss (in terms of material expectations of quality of life) worth tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of dollars during the last few years.
KurnReeser 3y ago
Your numbers leave out fuel/utilities and rent/housing increases. I can tell you that I kept every receipt, virtual and paper, starting July 1st 2021 and going through December 31st 2022. Running the numbers in March when I got around to it: My cost of living (with my lifestyle not changing!) went up 20.94% over those 18 months. It's gone up more since then but I don't know exactly how much - say, 5%-10% Our economy is "doing fine" because we've printed and spent 10 trillion dollars. That bill will come due, along with the bill for the other 20 trillion dollars we've printed and spent over the previous 20 years. If you're over 65 and live an average lifespan all this won't matter much to you. If you're under 45 and middle class (or lower down) you'll never retire, but your grand-kids might.
- P_I_Staker 3y ago
  > If you're under 45 and middle class (or lower down) you'll never retire, but your grand-kids might. This seems like scare mongering. Especially for people under ~35, that would likely be able to ride out economic problems. Not everyone has all their money in cash, lol. On top of investments, lots of middle class people own their house by age 50, and you can retire quite more easily with a paid for house. It also seems to me that these labor shortages aren't going away. There may be an ups and downs, but I'd be very surprised to go another 20 years without a covid-like jobs shortage, where businesses didn't seem fazed to throw money and benefits at the problem. An economic downturn isn't even really needed in the aftermath, or excessive inflation. We've had times where the average joe has prospered. Lots of really wonky things were done in the economy to cause COL increases. We gassed up the real estate market for very little reason. That's a big driver of the inflation, or especially cost of living. Also, it seems that there are market forces that caused the inflation in cost of products. I think cost of living can go down without deflation, but I could be wrong. If companies are overcharging, that could leave room in the market. It's already eroded their position, since many products are now similar in cost to premium products, yet lower quality.

0xDEF 3y ago

Dear lord, we should be thanking the gods that libertarian techbros are not running the economy.

Melting_Harps 3y ago
> Dear lord, we should be thanking the gods that libertarian techbros are not running the economy. Last I remember they were though, all the VC money (things that keep the US relevant outside of military) were in the hands of a few who have been techo-bro'ing it up with scams like NFT and AI (via LLMs) as the next big savior of the economy. When in reality this comes down to a very simple distortion of monetary policy that as someone said has never really equated to more than Ivy league Astronomy and tea leaf reading by way of the Federal Reserve; who have admitted they do not know how to solve this at all. Which if you see is clear as they are raising interest rates when the debt to GDP ratio has been over 100% even before COVID, which means we can never pay it off. Lastly, I want this to happen now; you people have lived so far outside of reality that unless this starts to affect you directly you will never consider an alternative: not only are fiat monetary systems doomed, but unless we get serious about building an exit from this we might have to deal with not just climate change, and warfare all at the same time, but if left to the nation-state model we are currently on, a Global ruinous monetary system in a multi-polar World where the quality of Life is so bad that people's desperation gets to levels only seen in sub-Sahara Africa or the Middle East. That is a volatile mix that in theory we have never really diverted from since 2008. If tech workers here proudly boast here about only really doing like 10 hours of actual work, and browsing HN all day than I should hope that by now you realize why that was a fool's errand and apply your efforts accordingly as this cannot be solved otherwise. This isn't about being a 'doomer,' hell I wish I was wrong about all of this but including the war in Ukraine I'm going on 5 of 5 predictions so far. My last one is based on the notion that if you are a millennial or younger all you've been exposed to is this perpetual grift and they wonder why the life expectancy has fallen, along with quality of Life and the biggest cause of death in the US for this age group is now overdose from Fentanyl. If the goal was to see a drastic drop in population like in Japan's post bubble economy than mission accomplished, but if it was to some how finding a way to motivate people to become multi-planetary or some other lofty goal, most couldn't care less because they see everything from the lens of 'we will just fuck things up there like we did here.' And that is what I'm seeing from Gen Z, they are so apathetic and perhaps rightly so, that I don't know what will get them motivated until it's too late.

icedchai 3y ago

All assets were also inflated. Anyone who stayed invested in something reasonable (example, S&P index fund) is up at least 40% since 2020, so it all works out. People who invested aggressively have done way better obviously. We’re single digit percent away from the 2021 high.