3 ms·

Here are some N-year rolling total inflation charts to put this datapoint in a longer-term perspective: https://totalrealreturns.com/inflation https://totalreal

Here are some N-year rolling total inflation charts to put this datapoint in a longer-term perspective: https://totalrealreturns.com/inflation https://totalrealreturns.com/inflation . Zooming out always smooths the noise.

searine 4mo ago
Simple, excellent data. Thanks.
listless 4mo ago
This is so good Ty. Basically, looking at inflation over time, we look pretty good here.
- jasondigitized 4mo ago
  Against what other metric? Income? Stock Market? Debt?
deleted 4mo ago
[deleted]
tclancy 4mo ago
I am not sure what the perspective is: we aren't the same economy (there are true financial system differences between now and say, 1985) and, even if we were the same, the three other shocks that rise like this are two world wars and an oil crisis. This is some dunderding old narcissist thinking he's the toughest kid on the block. You could argue the oil crisis was a similar result of the US never, ever learning a lesson about intervening in others' political systems (especially if there's oil involved), but trend line or not, no one had to go through this. And the trend line would bend differently if we could just learn the lesson.
- tclancy 4mo ago
  And yes I am oversimplifying: the current conditions are actually do to a number of stupid things the current administration did because they assumed everyone who came before them was stupid and woke, but this just strikes me wrong, as though the chart should be comfort to someone struggling to make rent or pay for medicine or what have you. Much of this could have been avoided.
  - cosmicgadget 4mo ago
    The "stupid and woke" thing is just marketing, they know exactly what they're doing.
embedding-shape 4mo ago
> Prices are up +4.25% in the past year, and +24.49% in the past 5 years, according to the latest CPI data released Jun. 10, 2026. The price level has approximately doubled (2.01x) today compared to August 1999. Not knowing if that's good/bad, as it is without any frame of reference, so the same data for Spain looks something like this: Prices up +3.2% in the past year, up +22.4% in the past 5 years. Compared to 1999, a 1.88× difference, and if you want to compare since when it doubled, it'd be around September 1996. This is according to a tool from INE, Spain’s national statistics: https://www.ine.es/varipc/index.do?L=1 https://www.ine.es/varipc/index.do?L=1
- hadlock 4mo ago
  2% is good, anything over 3% is not good, anything over 4% is bad, 5% and higher is really bad. Hope that clears things up for you.
  - embedding-shape 4mo ago
    Can you really say that based only on the inflation? What if wages increased 6%, then 3% inflation wouldn't be as bad as if inflation raised 2% but wages only increased 0.1%? At least if you think about purchasing power I suppose. But won't claim to be an expert on this, happy to be educated by those who are :)
    - anticorporate 4mo ago
      In general, higher inflation has a negative impact on consumer sentiment even if wage growth matches the inflation, which it rarely does. But the bigger issue is that inflation is generally distributed much more evenly than wage increases. Very few employers offer a COLA that is automatic, so wages almost always trail inflationary pressure.
    - recursivecaveat 4mo ago
      Part of it is just expectations btw. If the value of money is jumping up and down rapidly it is bad for business. Like if I'm going to sell you a 30 year fixed rate mortgage we require an accurate expectation of future inflation for one of us not to effectively lose their shirt on the deal. Imagine shops shuffling their prices up and down constantly, unions renegotiating contracts all the time, you sign up for 12 months of netflix but the price implicitly assumes that money will be worth N% less by month 12, etc. (imo a lot of these things should already be pegged, but people don't like doing that) It's basically just much more annoying to transact using a currency whose future value is unpredictable. So given that 2% is the stated target, which expectations are presumably largely built around, significant deviation is a failure to manage that process.
cyanydeez 4mo ago
Do understand actual policy decisions: https://www.richmondfed.org/publications/research/econ_focus/2024/q1_q2_federal_reserve https://www.richmondfed.org/publications/research/econ_focus...
alpinisme 4mo ago
That shows that it’s been since 1991 since we saw similar five year increases in prices. Which is a long time. You also have to be careful not to zoom out so far you get into the “we all die anyway” scale where you’re not really tracking things that are meaningful to on-the-ground, as-lived reality
cosmicgadget 4mo ago
Noise is a lot better when it's centered around 0.
dualvariable 4mo ago
1918 isn't very relevant to modern living. And nobody wants to go back to the stagflation of the 1970s. And that scale is logarithmic. Graph it without the logarithmic scale and draw a curve through the 1982-2018 data and the recent spike will explain why people are complaining about it.
- tjwebbnorfolk 4mo ago
  Indeed. Back then food and shelter comprised a much larger % of the average income, and so each percentage point of inflation was considerably more painful than it is now.
aftbit 4mo ago
Why is this logarithmic?
- tjwebbnorfolk 4mo ago
  Because inflation compounds
infecto 4mo ago
Zooming out in what sense? Those rolling charts don’t mean much imo. Year over year change is a pretty good perspective and a tick up like this is not great.
- jrflo 4mo ago
  Zooming out tells you this tick up to 4.2% is not nearly as bad as the post-covid inflation, and drastically better than the 70s. Not a good sign, but also not too far outside the historical mean and probably no need to panic in and of itself.
  - infecto 4mo ago
    I don’t think that tells us anything. We already know 7% > than 4.2. This should already be a fact that inflation was worse during Covid. I don’t think know that inflation was worse in the 70s helps fixes the narrative that 4.2% inflation is not good.
    - jrflo 4mo ago
      Obviously more inflation is bad almost always. The question is how bad. By looking at a graph, you can get a sense for the mean and standard deviation of inflation over time, and this looks to be a small deviation in the grand scheme of things. Of course, no one would call this good, but it's just good to put stuff like this in context.
      - infecto 4mo ago
        Again I don’t think it says anything. Yes inflation was worse during Covid and before I was born, that just sounds silly btw. There is no perspective to be frank, energy is up a lot, that will impact other goods over the next few quarters.
jasondigitized 4mo ago
Now overlay average income on top
deleted 4mo ago
[deleted]

searine 4mo ago

Simple, excellent data. Thanks.

listless 4mo ago

This is so good Ty. Basically, looking at inflation over time, we look pretty good here.

jasondigitized 4mo ago
Against what other metric? Income? Stock Market? Debt?

deleted 4mo ago

[deleted]

tclancy 4mo ago

I am not sure what the perspective is: we aren't the same economy (there are true financial system differences between now and say, 1985) and, even if we were the same, the three other shocks that rise like this are two world wars and an oil crisis. This is some dunderding old narcissist thinking he's the toughest kid on the block. You could argue the oil crisis was a similar result of the US never, ever learning a lesson about intervening in others' political systems (especially if there's oil involved), but trend line or not, no one had to go through this. And the trend line would bend differently if we could just learn the lesson.

tclancy 4mo ago
And yes I am oversimplifying: the current conditions are actually do to a number of stupid things the current administration did because they assumed everyone who came before them was stupid and woke, but this just strikes me wrong, as though the chart should be comfort to someone struggling to make rent or pay for medicine or what have you. Much of this could have been avoided.
- cosmicgadget 4mo ago
  The "stupid and woke" thing is just marketing, they know exactly what they're doing.

embedding-shape 4mo ago

> Prices are up +4.25% in the past year, and +24.49% in the past 5 years, according to the latest CPI data released Jun. 10, 2026. The price level has approximately doubled (2.01x) today compared to August 1999. Not knowing if that's good/bad, as it is without any frame of reference, so the same data for Spain looks something like this: Prices up +3.2% in the past year, up +22.4% in the past 5 years. Compared to 1999, a 1.88× difference, and if you want to compare since when it doubled, it'd be around September 1996. This is according to a tool from INE, Spain’s national statistics: https://www.ine.es/varipc/index.do?L=1 https://www.ine.es/varipc/index.do?L=1

hadlock 4mo ago
2% is good, anything over 3% is not good, anything over 4% is bad, 5% and higher is really bad. Hope that clears things up for you.
- embedding-shape 4mo ago
  Can you really say that based only on the inflation? What if wages increased 6%, then 3% inflation wouldn't be as bad as if inflation raised 2% but wages only increased 0.1%? At least if you think about purchasing power I suppose. But won't claim to be an expert on this, happy to be educated by those who are :)
  - anticorporate 4mo ago
    In general, higher inflation has a negative impact on consumer sentiment even if wage growth matches the inflation, which it rarely does. But the bigger issue is that inflation is generally distributed much more evenly than wage increases. Very few employers offer a COLA that is automatic, so wages almost always trail inflationary pressure.
  - recursivecaveat 4mo ago
    Part of it is just expectations btw. If the value of money is jumping up and down rapidly it is bad for business. Like if I'm going to sell you a 30 year fixed rate mortgage we require an accurate expectation of future inflation for one of us not to effectively lose their shirt on the deal. Imagine shops shuffling their prices up and down constantly, unions renegotiating contracts all the time, you sign up for 12 months of netflix but the price implicitly assumes that money will be worth N% less by month 12, etc. (imo a lot of these things should already be pegged, but people don't like doing that) It's basically just much more annoying to transact using a currency whose future value is unpredictable. So given that 2% is the stated target, which expectations are presumably largely built around, significant deviation is a failure to manage that process.

cyanydeez 4mo ago

Do understand actual policy decisions: https://www.richmondfed.org/publications/research/econ_focus/2024/q1_q2_federal_reserve https://www.richmondfed.org/publications/research/econ_focus...

alpinisme 4mo ago

That shows that it’s been since 1991 since we saw similar five year increases in prices. Which is a long time. You also have to be careful not to zoom out so far you get into the “we all die anyway” scale where you’re not really tracking things that are meaningful to on-the-ground, as-lived reality

cosmicgadget 4mo ago

Noise is a lot better when it's centered around 0.

dualvariable 4mo ago

1918 isn't very relevant to modern living. And nobody wants to go back to the stagflation of the 1970s. And that scale is logarithmic. Graph it without the logarithmic scale and draw a curve through the 1982-2018 data and the recent spike will explain why people are complaining about it.

tjwebbnorfolk 4mo ago
Indeed. Back then food and shelter comprised a much larger % of the average income, and so each percentage point of inflation was considerably more painful than it is now.

aftbit 4mo ago

Why is this logarithmic?

tjwebbnorfolk 4mo ago
Because inflation compounds

infecto 4mo ago

Zooming out in what sense? Those rolling charts don’t mean much imo. Year over year change is a pretty good perspective and a tick up like this is not great.

jrflo 4mo ago
Zooming out tells you this tick up to 4.2% is not nearly as bad as the post-covid inflation, and drastically better than the 70s. Not a good sign, but also not too far outside the historical mean and probably no need to panic in and of itself.
- infecto 4mo ago
  I don’t think that tells us anything. We already know 7% > than 4.2. This should already be a fact that inflation was worse during Covid. I don’t think know that inflation was worse in the 70s helps fixes the narrative that 4.2% inflation is not good.
  - jrflo 4mo ago
    Obviously more inflation is bad almost always. The question is how bad. By looking at a graph, you can get a sense for the mean and standard deviation of inflation over time, and this looks to be a small deviation in the grand scheme of things. Of course, no one would call this good, but it's just good to put stuff like this in context.
    - infecto 4mo ago
      Again I don’t think it says anything. Yes inflation was worse during Covid and before I was born, that just sounds silly btw. There is no perspective to be frank, energy is up a lot, that will impact other goods over the next few quarters.

jasondigitized 4mo ago

Now overlay average income on top

deleted 4mo ago

[deleted]