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Pick whatever word you like if "inflation" is reserved for economists because regular people are "just too dumb to understand". We need a concept for debasemen

Pick whatever word you like if "inflation" is reserved for economists because regular people are "just too dumb to understand". We need a concept for debasement / hidden tax that allows people to hold their policymakers accountable. My point is that CPI isn't it, it underestimates true inflation by 3-5x or more , and it interferes with good governance. If the govt wants money from the people, they need to tax them and be held accountable for the policy

randomdata 3y ago
> Pick whatever word you like if "inflation" is reserved for economists because regular people are "just too dumb to understand". Regular people understand inflation just fine. How useful it is to them is debatable, but it doesn't have to be for everyone. It's okay if some measurements are only useful to scientists and economists. The measure of the speed of light doesn't mean much in my day to day life either, but we don't have to abolish it because of that. > We need a concept for debasement / hidden tax that allows people to hold their policymakers accountable. I think what most people are looking for is simply cost of living measure. They want to know by how much the costs to live (housing, food, etc.) have increased over inflation. Which we have. But that one might actually be a case of being "too dumb to understand", explaining why it is not commonly put to use. Inflation is, indeed, a much simpler concept. Or it may be that the ultimate cost of living measurement comes from one's own personal accounting records[1], negating the need to reach for any 'universal' perspective. [1] But I suspect most people don't keep any accounting records, so most likely the first one.
- JumpCrisscross 3y ago
  > what most people are looking for is simply cost of living measure You may have cracked the conundrum right there. People use inflation as a gauge of COL. That is incorrect, but understandable given the lack of a well-publicised national COL metric.
  - randomdata 3y ago
    > People use inflation as a gauge of COL. Which is interesting as you'd think actually living, and incurring the costs that go along with it, would be a much more useful gauge. Probably goes along with my suspicion that most people, especially those not already accounting for business activities, don't keep any meaningful record of their transactions. Hard to calculate COL without data. But at the same time, there isn't much effort in publishing national COL metrics as it is presumed that people will already know their own situation, which is always going to be way more telling. Individual COL can vary widely, even between neighbours, let alone on a national scale.
    - JumpCrisscross 3y ago
      > you'd think actually living, and incurring the costs that go along with it, would be a much more useful gauge Not for a monetary authority. Given how much drama we have around even our Census Bureau, this gap makes sense. (Also, for every complaint about a given inflation gauge, one increases the parameter and thus bitchable space by orders of magnitude when it comes to COL.) > there isn't much effort in publishing national COL metrics as it is presumed that people will already know their own situation But political leaders won’t.
      - randomdata 3y ago
        > Not for a monetary authority. We track this information, though. Anyone doing any economic-related work will be well familiar with the data. We just don't publicize in any grand fashion because who else needs to hear it? I'll grant you that people who write comments on the internet tend to be completely out to lunch, but most people have some kind of handle on their COL situation. They aren't going to learn anything they don't already know, so there is no reason to listen in. You need demand in order for supply to show up. Inflation doesn't mean much to Average Joe either, to be fair, except it is a leading indicator of interest rates, and Average Joe does care about interest rates, so this is why Average Joe is listening for inflation information. > But political leaders won’t. The leaders are the people. The very same people. If you are trying to imply that the leaders are as lazy about democracy as they are accounting, and are willing to let the hired help do whatever it wants because they don't want to ever have to take the time to talk to them, I'm with you. Not much you can do there. But if they don't care, nobody else is going to either.
maxerickson 3y ago
5x? And you think the US in general has gotten more dangerous?
- tonymet 3y ago
  what's your opinion?
  - dmoy 3y ago
    The US gets more and less dangerous over time, it varies. It's presently a little bit more dangerous than the early 60s, but way less dangerous than the 70s-90s.
jimkleiber 3y ago
For me, I'm not surprised inflation went up. We had a global lockdown during which some industries made a lot of money and some industries made little to no money. Once the lockdown ended, I assume the ones who made a lot started to lose sales and increased their prices to keep growing. I assume the ones who didn't make a lot of money started to increase sales again and probably increased their prices to recover the money they didn't make. I imagine both of them want to make sure they have enough money to survive another global crisis, especially the ones that almost didn't survive it. So, yes, I think the government has a role in trying to limit inflation (and also increase wages), I just think that some inflation makes sense from those dynamics above.
epicureanideal 3y ago
> We need a concept for debasement / hidden tax that allows people to hold their policymakers accountable. This is a really good idea and I hope someone popularizes a new measure.
imtringued 3y ago
I don't know what to tell you, but buying a house from a previous owner at double or tripple the price is not a hidden tax.
esoterica 3y ago
You are completely mathematically illiterate if you think that annual inflation is 3-5 times higher than the reported value. The average annual inflation since 1960 is 3.7%. If the real annual inflation were 3x that (11.1%) then we would have seen 85000% cumulative inflation since 1960. A gallon of gasoline cost $0.30 in 1960, so it would cost $250 in 2024 under 850x inflation. In reality a gallon of gas costs $3.60 today, which is not far off from the 10.5x inflation the CPI measures over that time frame (the same CPI you claim is massively understated). You're running around this thread smugly declaring yourself too smart to fall for the government's lies while failing to spend a few seconds doing the trivial arithmetic that would disprove all of your deeply held beliefs. Which of your other political or economic beliefs will fall apart with a little bit of middle school math?
- dang 3y ago
  Your account has been breaking the site guidelines repeatedly and we have to ban that sort of account, so if you'd please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and stick to the rules from now on (regardless of how wrong anybody else is or you feel they are), we'd appreciate it.
- rafaelero 3y ago
  Computers got 99% cheaper, so by your analogy of only considering an arbitrary product, we have actually experienced deflation!
  - esoterica 3y ago
    Are you seriously insisting that the average product has gone up in price by 850x since 1960 and that gasoline is a huge outlier that has appreciated much much less than everything else?

randomdata 3y ago

> Pick whatever word you like if "inflation" is reserved for economists because regular people are "just too dumb to understand". Regular people understand inflation just fine. How useful it is to them is debatable, but it doesn't have to be for everyone. It's okay if some measurements are only useful to scientists and economists. The measure of the speed of light doesn't mean much in my day to day life either, but we don't have to abolish it because of that. > We need a concept for debasement / hidden tax that allows people to hold their policymakers accountable. I think what most people are looking for is simply cost of living measure. They want to know by how much the costs to live (housing, food, etc.) have increased over inflation. Which we have. But that one might actually be a case of being "too dumb to understand", explaining why it is not commonly put to use. Inflation is, indeed, a much simpler concept. Or it may be that the ultimate cost of living measurement comes from one's own personal accounting records[1], negating the need to reach for any 'universal' perspective. [1] But I suspect most people don't keep any accounting records, so most likely the first one.

JumpCrisscross 3y ago
> what most people are looking for is simply cost of living measure You may have cracked the conundrum right there. People use inflation as a gauge of COL. That is incorrect, but understandable given the lack of a well-publicised national COL metric.
- randomdata 3y ago
  > People use inflation as a gauge of COL. Which is interesting as you'd think actually living, and incurring the costs that go along with it, would be a much more useful gauge. Probably goes along with my suspicion that most people, especially those not already accounting for business activities, don't keep any meaningful record of their transactions. Hard to calculate COL without data. But at the same time, there isn't much effort in publishing national COL metrics as it is presumed that people will already know their own situation, which is always going to be way more telling. Individual COL can vary widely, even between neighbours, let alone on a national scale.
  - JumpCrisscross 3y ago
    > you'd think actually living, and incurring the costs that go along with it, would be a much more useful gauge Not for a monetary authority. Given how much drama we have around even our Census Bureau, this gap makes sense. (Also, for every complaint about a given inflation gauge, one increases the parameter and thus bitchable space by orders of magnitude when it comes to COL.) > there isn't much effort in publishing national COL metrics as it is presumed that people will already know their own situation But political leaders won’t.
    - randomdata 3y ago
      > Not for a monetary authority. We track this information, though. Anyone doing any economic-related work will be well familiar with the data. We just don't publicize in any grand fashion because who else needs to hear it? I'll grant you that people who write comments on the internet tend to be completely out to lunch, but most people have some kind of handle on their COL situation. They aren't going to learn anything they don't already know, so there is no reason to listen in. You need demand in order for supply to show up. Inflation doesn't mean much to Average Joe either, to be fair, except it is a leading indicator of interest rates, and Average Joe does care about interest rates, so this is why Average Joe is listening for inflation information. > But political leaders won’t. The leaders are the people. The very same people. If you are trying to imply that the leaders are as lazy about democracy as they are accounting, and are willing to let the hired help do whatever it wants because they don't want to ever have to take the time to talk to them, I'm with you. Not much you can do there. But if they don't care, nobody else is going to either.

maxerickson 3y ago

5x? And you think the US in general has gotten more dangerous?

tonymet 3y ago
what's your opinion?
- dmoy 3y ago
  The US gets more and less dangerous over time, it varies. It's presently a little bit more dangerous than the early 60s, but way less dangerous than the 70s-90s.

jimkleiber 3y ago

For me, I'm not surprised inflation went up. We had a global lockdown during which some industries made a lot of money and some industries made little to no money. Once the lockdown ended, I assume the ones who made a lot started to lose sales and increased their prices to keep growing. I assume the ones who didn't make a lot of money started to increase sales again and probably increased their prices to recover the money they didn't make. I imagine both of them want to make sure they have enough money to survive another global crisis, especially the ones that almost didn't survive it. So, yes, I think the government has a role in trying to limit inflation (and also increase wages), I just think that some inflation makes sense from those dynamics above.

epicureanideal 3y ago

> We need a concept for debasement / hidden tax that allows people to hold their policymakers accountable. This is a really good idea and I hope someone popularizes a new measure.

imtringued 3y ago

I don't know what to tell you, but buying a house from a previous owner at double or tripple the price is not a hidden tax.

esoterica 3y ago

You are completely mathematically illiterate if you think that annual inflation is 3-5 times higher than the reported value. The average annual inflation since 1960 is 3.7%. If the real annual inflation were 3x that (11.1%) then we would have seen 85000% cumulative inflation since 1960. A gallon of gasoline cost $0.30 in 1960, so it would cost $250 in 2024 under 850x inflation. In reality a gallon of gas costs $3.60 today, which is not far off from the 10.5x inflation the CPI measures over that time frame (the same CPI you claim is massively understated). You're running around this thread smugly declaring yourself too smart to fall for the government's lies while failing to spend a few seconds doing the trivial arithmetic that would disprove all of your deeply held beliefs. Which of your other political or economic beliefs will fall apart with a little bit of middle school math?

dang 3y ago
Your account has been breaking the site guidelines repeatedly and we have to ban that sort of account, so if you'd please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and stick to the rules from now on (regardless of how wrong anybody else is or you feel they are), we'd appreciate it.
rafaelero 3y ago
Computers got 99% cheaper, so by your analogy of only considering an arbitrary product, we have actually experienced deflation!
- esoterica 3y ago
  Are you seriously insisting that the average product has gone up in price by 850x since 1960 and that gasoline is a huge outlier that has appreciated much much less than everything else?