3 ms·

3.6% annualized, 0.3% for the month. Grocery-store food is down, restaurants up. Most of the increase driven by fuel and shelter, both normal for this time of

• the_real_cher 2y ago
  Isnt normal inflation around 3% annually average over decades?
  • fsckboy 2y ago
    it's going to vary by country=currency, but 3% is a bit on the high side of what's desireable. the most desirable feature of inflation would be predictability: if inflation in the future is reliably well known, then interest rates and budgets can be calculated and planned, no surprises. but in general a small amount of inflation is a good thing in no small part because it forces prices to adjust across the economy, including prices for labor. this allows wages to increase more in sectors of the economy where demand is higher, while other wages will go down in a relative sense without actually going down which is very problematic because rent, car payments, etc don't go down.
  • legitster 2y ago
    2% is the target - 3% is not too bad. For the last few decades, Federal Reserves have actually struggled to get it as high as 2%!
• fsckboy 2y ago
  annualized means "(1+r)^n" where r is the increase/month and n is number of months. inflation is generally measured "over year", so "3.6% this month" would mean "3.6% higher than last year at this time", as in "this month's increase plus the increases for the last 11 months total up to 3.6% for the year". It has no predictive power for the future, and it's not an extrapolation of this month's increase for easy comparison to show what it would be for a year.
• cableshaft 2y ago
  We've cut down on our restaurant expenses quite a bit, and we're back to cooking a lot more. When we do eat out, we try to keep it fairly cheap now, just an entree and water, and try to go to places when they have nice deals (like one gastropub near us has 50% off pizzas on Monday-Wednesday, we both get a pizza, eat half there, and have lunch the next day for $18 + tip).