5 ms·

That seems subjectively accurate, looking at my grocery store receipts and $13/lb meat. Certainly more accurate than “3.5%” bullshit the “free press” is asking

by ein0p 3y ago

That seems subjectively accurate, looking at my grocery store receipts and $13/lb meat. Certainly more accurate than “3.5%” bullshit the “free press” is asking us to believe.

jeffbee 3y ago
If you have fancy meat tastes, that's on you. https://www.ers.usda.gov/webdocs/DataFiles/52160/cuts.xls?v=717.1 https://www.ers.usda.gov/webdocs/DataFiles/52160/cuts.xls?v=...
- ein0p 3y ago
  Those aren’t fancy cuts or prime grade beef. Just regular steak at Kroger or Costco. Go see for yourself if you’re in the US. It really feels like the bottom is about to fall out from US economy. I don’t know how the low income families deal with a 30% increase in their grocery bills which were a significant chunk of their spending even a few years ago. Nor how they pay rent which has also increased massively.
  - ejstronge 3y ago
    > Those aren’t fancy cuts or prime grade beef. Just regular steak... I don’t know how the low income families deal with a 30% increase in their grocery bills I don't think low income families are buying steak - and price increases in luxury goods can understandably grow faster than in staples like non-steak beef.
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
    - ein0p 3y ago
      But _all_ cuts of beef went up by a lot as far as I can tell. So did chicken, fish, and all other sources of protein. It’s not just protein though, everything across the board is on average 25-30% more expensive now than it was 3-4 years ago. A cart of foodstuffs that used to cost $100 give or take is now $130-140. This isn’t some Whole Foods kind of situation, this is a run of the mill Kroger normal people shop at
      - Dylan16807 3y ago
        If you're comparing against 3-4 years ago, CPI says inflation was 18-21%. So if it's actually 25-30%, that's a significant level of error but not an enormous one. CPI says that, of those four years, almost all the inflation was in the middle two. So when it says 3.5% since last year, that's not a crazy number, it's more that it's hard to determine/remember which part of the inflation happened in exactly which month. Comparing today to 3-4 years ago is a better option for both accurate numbers and accurate memories.
        wakawaka28 3y ago
        >So if it's actually 25-30%, that's a significant level of error but not an enormous one. Tell that to people on Social Security... They will come up short because of these "errors".
        Dylan16807 3y ago
        Ha ha, very funny. But seriously, there is a huge difference between "I think this metric is off by 3x or more" and "I think this metric is off by 1.4x"
        wakawaka28 3y ago
        It's not funny dude, that is a serious problem. I have parents on Social Security and I have to pay for their budgetary shortfall. Social Security in particular is supposed to be adjusted for inflation, which is one of the reasons the numbers are deliberately wrong. >But seriously, there is a huge difference between "I think this metric is off by 3x or more" and "I think this metric is off by 1.4x" I think annual inflation is actually 10% right now and probably got up to 20% during the pandemic. Depending on when you look at it, that is 2-3x what the official numbers say. Prices have not gone up uniformly across categories of course, but most things are significantly more expensive than than the official numbers would predict.
        Dylan16807 3y ago
- cco 3y ago
  Your data suggests something like 11% inflation for ground beef which was the gp's point, "not 3.5% inflation".
- zarathustreal 3y ago
  You’re oddly quick to jump into every thread to tell people they’re wrong about this, care to share your motivation?
Cyph0n 3y ago
Another indicator is how quickly people resort to strawman arguments instead of responding to the point - “why are you buying good cuts of meat??”.
ethbr1 3y ago
> Certainly more accurate than “3.5%” bullshit the “free press” is asking us to believe. Okay, because the air quotes and knee jerk dismissal annoy me... The 3.x% being published is journalists repeating the reported CPI. They are indeed still a free press, they're just dealing with people who don't on average understand how inflation measures are built, nor care. Which is why there are articles that attempt to educate on that, whenever it comes to popular attention https://www.npr.org/2023/10/18/1197954369/two-indicators-bureau-of-labor-statistics-behind-the-scenes https://www.npr.org/2023/10/18/1197954369/two-indicators-bur... https://www.forbes.com/advisor/investing/cpi-consumer-price-index/ https://www.forbes.com/advisor/investing/cpi-consumer-price-... If you wanted to air quote something, a "viewer-respecting" "intelligent" free press would be more accurately dismissive.
tootie 3y ago
The "free press" is reporting BLS data. And BLS produces a CPI number based on a formula to act as an indicator, not an absolute measure. People tend to react to things they buy frequently which also happen to be the most volatile (food and fuel) and react less to things they actually spend most of their money on (shelter and transportation). CPI is a broad indicator and will never match the lived experiences of 350M individuals. Inflation can vary widely across a lot of dimensions including geography. Absolutely all of this data is available from the BLS. They only put CPI in headlines because it is meant to convey broad national trends in a bite-sized data point.
- wakawaka28 3y ago
  >People tend to react to things they buy frequently which also happen to be the most volatile (food and fuel) and react less to things they actually spend most of their money on (shelter and transportation). Are you suggesting housing prices haven't gone up similar to food prices? Because they have. House prices in many places went up 50% in the last few years and never went back down. People aren't imagining this inflation. It isn't 3%, that's for damn sure. It's at least 10% right now, and probably hit as high as 20% during the pandemic.
  - tootie 3y ago
    I am not implying that. But house prices by their nature move more slowly. Even if new listing are more expensive, anyone in a long-term lease or an owner isn't subject to new prices. Or anyone who has exited the housing marker (ie moving in with parents) is not paying high prices.
    - wakawaka28 3y ago
      >But house prices by their nature move more slowly. They can and have moved very fast in the past few years. >Even if new listing are more expensive, anyone in a long-term lease or an owner isn't subject to new prices. Or anyone who has exited the housing marker (ie moving in with parents) is not paying high prices. That is a very short-term situation. Everyone who doesn't own a house needs to pay rent. And homeowners will eventually be faced with higher taxes as a result of inflated values, and they might not be able to cope. People who are forced to move in with parents aren't managing some epic life hack, they are trying to scrape by in the face of high prices. It seems like you're trying to make the argument "There is no inflation and even if there is, it doesn't matter." And I'm not buying it.
maxerickson 3y ago
Meat was already expensive a year ago, it isn't unlikely that the price increased about 3.5%. And then of course, they often report monthly numbers on an annualized basis.
- ein0p 3y ago
  We’re at a point where my bigtech six figure circles are starting to notice and switch to chicken. But by all means do please continue to deny reality. Because by the looks of it we’re headed into a Carter style stagflation for the next 15 years.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
throw0101c 3y ago
> That seems subjectively accurate, looking at my grocery store receipts and $13/lb meat. Certainly more accurate than “3.5%” bullshit the “free press” is asking us to believe. You do know that the CPI (and CPE) are made up of components, right? Like Shelter, Energy, Transportation… Food. Food can go up more that 3.5% while other items (like Transportation/Energy/Oil) go down, so on average the prices you see have gone up by 3.5%. The individual components may be more (or less) than the 3.5% average. Further, the CPI is an average basket of goods and services (taken from spending surveys done by many people), which may or may not correspond to what you personally put in your own basket. In Canada, StatCan has a Personal Inflation Calculator where you can enter budget as see your personal inflation rate which may be different than the headline inflation rate: * https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/pub/71-607-x/71-607-x2020cal-eng.htm https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/pub/71-607-x/71-607-x2020cal... * https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/pub/71-607-x/71-607-x2020015-eng.htm https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/pub/71-607-x/71-607-x2020015... Further, the number you see in headlines is a national average which may be different to what has happened to your local prices. TL; DR: model of reality ≠ reality.
- ein0p 3y ago
  CPI is designed to make the government look good, hence the article.
  - throw0101c 3y ago
    > CPI is designed to make the government look good, hence the article. The CPI is run by the Bureau of Labor Statistics: > The "food price index" evolved into what we now call the Consumer Price Index (CPI). During World War I, rapid increases in prices, particularly in shipbuilding centers, made a more comprehensive index essential for calculating cost-of-living adjustments in wages. Studies of family expenditures were conducted in 92 industrial centers in 1917–19 in order to provide appropriate weighting patterns for the index. Periodic collection of prices was started and, in 1919, the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) began publication of separate consumer price indexes for 32 cities. Regular publication of a national index, the U.S. city average, began in 1921, and indexes were estimated back to 1913. * https://www.bls.gov/opub/hom/cpi/history.htm https://www.bls.gov/opub/hom/cpi/history.htm It is one of most examined numbers in statistics, and while the "best" way† to do things is debated, are there any non-tin-foil hat people that think that the numbers are actually wrong given the published methodologies? Entire research projects (which have released source code) have examined the official numbers and found that they track things fairly well: * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MIT_Billion_Prices_project https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MIT_Billion_Prices_project † Often no such thing exists, but rather trade-offs in various metrics.
esoterica 3y ago
Did you read the article at all? Unless you were buying meat with personal loans the issue of whether or not interest expenses should be included in CPI has no relevance to correct measurement of food inflation.
- dang 3y ago
  "Please don't comment on whether someone read an article. "Did you even read the article? It mentions that" can be shortened to "The article mentions that."" https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

by ein0p 3y ago

That seems subjectively accurate, looking at my grocery store receipts and $13/lb meat. Certainly more accurate than “3.5%” bullshit the “free press” is asking us to believe.

jeffbee 3y ago

If you have fancy meat tastes, that's on you. https://www.ers.usda.gov/webdocs/DataFiles/52160/cuts.xls?v=717.1 https://www.ers.usda.gov/webdocs/DataFiles/52160/cuts.xls?v=...

ein0p 3y ago
Those aren’t fancy cuts or prime grade beef. Just regular steak at Kroger or Costco. Go see for yourself if you’re in the US. It really feels like the bottom is about to fall out from US economy. I don’t know how the low income families deal with a 30% increase in their grocery bills which were a significant chunk of their spending even a few years ago. Nor how they pay rent which has also increased massively.
- ejstronge 3y ago
  > Those aren’t fancy cuts or prime grade beef. Just regular steak... I don’t know how the low income families deal with a 30% increase in their grocery bills I don't think low income families are buying steak - and price increases in luxury goods can understandably grow faster than in staples like non-steak beef.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - ein0p 3y ago
    But _all_ cuts of beef went up by a lot as far as I can tell. So did chicken, fish, and all other sources of protein. It’s not just protein though, everything across the board is on average 25-30% more expensive now than it was 3-4 years ago. A cart of foodstuffs that used to cost $100 give or take is now $130-140. This isn’t some Whole Foods kind of situation, this is a run of the mill Kroger normal people shop at
    - Dylan16807 3y ago
      If you're comparing against 3-4 years ago, CPI says inflation was 18-21%. So if it's actually 25-30%, that's a significant level of error but not an enormous one. CPI says that, of those four years, almost all the inflation was in the middle two. So when it says 3.5% since last year, that's not a crazy number, it's more that it's hard to determine/remember which part of the inflation happened in exactly which month. Comparing today to 3-4 years ago is a better option for both accurate numbers and accurate memories.
      - wakawaka28 3y ago
        >So if it's actually 25-30%, that's a significant level of error but not an enormous one. Tell that to people on Social Security... They will come up short because of these "errors".
        Dylan16807 3y ago
        Ha ha, very funny. But seriously, there is a huge difference between "I think this metric is off by 3x or more" and "I think this metric is off by 1.4x"
        wakawaka28 3y ago
        It's not funny dude, that is a serious problem. I have parents on Social Security and I have to pay for their budgetary shortfall. Social Security in particular is supposed to be adjusted for inflation, which is one of the reasons the numbers are deliberately wrong. >But seriously, there is a huge difference between "I think this metric is off by 3x or more" and "I think this metric is off by 1.4x" I think annual inflation is actually 10% right now and probably got up to 20% during the pandemic. Depending on when you look at it, that is 2-3x what the official numbers say. Prices have not gone up uniformly across categories of course, but most things are significantly more expensive than than the official numbers would predict.
        Dylan16807 3y ago
cco 3y ago
Your data suggests something like 11% inflation for ground beef which was the gp's point, "not 3.5% inflation".
zarathustreal 3y ago
You’re oddly quick to jump into every thread to tell people they’re wrong about this, care to share your motivation?

Cyph0n 3y ago

Another indicator is how quickly people resort to strawman arguments instead of responding to the point - “why are you buying good cuts of meat??”.

ethbr1 3y ago

> Certainly more accurate than “3.5%” bullshit the “free press” is asking us to believe. Okay, because the air quotes and knee jerk dismissal annoy me... The 3.x% being published is journalists repeating the reported CPI. They are indeed still a free press, they're just dealing with people who don't on average understand how inflation measures are built, nor care. Which is why there are articles that attempt to educate on that, whenever it comes to popular attention https://www.npr.org/2023/10/18/1197954369/two-indicators-bureau-of-labor-statistics-behind-the-scenes https://www.npr.org/2023/10/18/1197954369/two-indicators-bur... https://www.forbes.com/advisor/investing/cpi-consumer-price-index/ https://www.forbes.com/advisor/investing/cpi-consumer-price-... If you wanted to air quote something, a "viewer-respecting" "intelligent" free press would be more accurately dismissive.

tootie 3y ago

The "free press" is reporting BLS data. And BLS produces a CPI number based on a formula to act as an indicator, not an absolute measure. People tend to react to things they buy frequently which also happen to be the most volatile (food and fuel) and react less to things they actually spend most of their money on (shelter and transportation). CPI is a broad indicator and will never match the lived experiences of 350M individuals. Inflation can vary widely across a lot of dimensions including geography. Absolutely all of this data is available from the BLS. They only put CPI in headlines because it is meant to convey broad national trends in a bite-sized data point.

wakawaka28 3y ago
>People tend to react to things they buy frequently which also happen to be the most volatile (food and fuel) and react less to things they actually spend most of their money on (shelter and transportation). Are you suggesting housing prices haven't gone up similar to food prices? Because they have. House prices in many places went up 50% in the last few years and never went back down. People aren't imagining this inflation. It isn't 3%, that's for damn sure. It's at least 10% right now, and probably hit as high as 20% during the pandemic.
- tootie 3y ago
  I am not implying that. But house prices by their nature move more slowly. Even if new listing are more expensive, anyone in a long-term lease or an owner isn't subject to new prices. Or anyone who has exited the housing marker (ie moving in with parents) is not paying high prices.
  - wakawaka28 3y ago
    >But house prices by their nature move more slowly. They can and have moved very fast in the past few years. >Even if new listing are more expensive, anyone in a long-term lease or an owner isn't subject to new prices. Or anyone who has exited the housing marker (ie moving in with parents) is not paying high prices. That is a very short-term situation. Everyone who doesn't own a house needs to pay rent. And homeowners will eventually be faced with higher taxes as a result of inflated values, and they might not be able to cope. People who are forced to move in with parents aren't managing some epic life hack, they are trying to scrape by in the face of high prices. It seems like you're trying to make the argument "There is no inflation and even if there is, it doesn't matter." And I'm not buying it.

maxerickson 3y ago

Meat was already expensive a year ago, it isn't unlikely that the price increased about 3.5%. And then of course, they often report monthly numbers on an annualized basis.

ein0p 3y ago
We’re at a point where my bigtech six figure circles are starting to notice and switch to chicken. But by all means do please continue to deny reality. Because by the looks of it we’re headed into a Carter style stagflation for the next 15 years.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]

throw0101c 3y ago

> That seems subjectively accurate, looking at my grocery store receipts and $13/lb meat. Certainly more accurate than “3.5%” bullshit the “free press” is asking us to believe. You do know that the CPI (and CPE) are made up of components, right? Like Shelter, Energy, Transportation… Food. Food can go up more that 3.5% while other items (like Transportation/Energy/Oil) go down, so on average the prices you see have gone up by 3.5%. The individual components may be more (or less) than the 3.5% average. Further, the CPI is an average basket of goods and services (taken from spending surveys done by many people), which may or may not correspond to what you personally put in your own basket. In Canada, StatCan has a Personal Inflation Calculator where you can enter budget as see your personal inflation rate which may be different than the headline inflation rate: * https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/pub/71-607-x/71-607-x2020cal-eng.htm https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/pub/71-607-x/71-607-x2020cal... * https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/pub/71-607-x/71-607-x2020015-eng.htm https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/pub/71-607-x/71-607-x2020015... Further, the number you see in headlines is a national average which may be different to what has happened to your local prices. TL; DR: model of reality ≠ reality.

ein0p 3y ago
CPI is designed to make the government look good, hence the article.
- throw0101c 3y ago
  > CPI is designed to make the government look good, hence the article. The CPI is run by the Bureau of Labor Statistics: > The "food price index" evolved into what we now call the Consumer Price Index (CPI). During World War I, rapid increases in prices, particularly in shipbuilding centers, made a more comprehensive index essential for calculating cost-of-living adjustments in wages. Studies of family expenditures were conducted in 92 industrial centers in 1917–19 in order to provide appropriate weighting patterns for the index. Periodic collection of prices was started and, in 1919, the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) began publication of separate consumer price indexes for 32 cities. Regular publication of a national index, the U.S. city average, began in 1921, and indexes were estimated back to 1913. * https://www.bls.gov/opub/hom/cpi/history.htm https://www.bls.gov/opub/hom/cpi/history.htm It is one of most examined numbers in statistics, and while the "best" way† to do things is debated, are there any non-tin-foil hat people that think that the numbers are actually wrong given the published methodologies? Entire research projects (which have released source code) have examined the official numbers and found that they track things fairly well: * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MIT_Billion_Prices_project https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MIT_Billion_Prices_project † Often no such thing exists, but rather trade-offs in various metrics.

esoterica 3y ago

Did you read the article at all? Unless you were buying meat with personal loans the issue of whether or not interest expenses should be included in CPI has no relevance to correct measurement of food inflation.

dang 3y ago
"Please don't comment on whether someone read an article. "Did you even read the article? It mentions that" can be shortened to "The article mentions that."" https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html