I think there’s no inflation, because we’re in a depression.
With regards to hamburger, aren’t high beef prices the result of drought (hits supply) and increasing demand? Basically, market forces? (Sort of the flip side of oil: huge supply glut, global demand down ...b/c of the depression).
I don’t know all of this with any certainty. Just trying to advance the conversation here.....
https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/drought/201507
Based on the Palmer Drought Index, severe to extreme drought affected about 14 percent of the contiguous United States as of the end of July 2015, a little less than last month. About 24 percent of the contiguous U.S. fell in the severely to extremely wet categories.
The cost of beef generally has gone through the roof, not just hamburger. Hamburger is not really the same as beef, for economic survey purposes though. About half of hamburger comes from dairy beef. Although CA is the #1 dairy state in the US, dairy production in CA is declining because of environmentalist pressure being applied to dairy farms, which, unlike nut and grape growers [and many others] have plenty of places they can move to outside of California. And they are. But it doesn't make that much difference anyway. Most dairy beef doesn't come from drought country, but from the Northeastern US and Upper midwest.
Higher beef costs across the board are a function of the cost of feed, and US energy policy is a part of that problem. It is simply INSANE to mandate the production of corn ethanol when corn is our #1 grain product. Corn cereals and sugars are used in all kinds of food, and turning good food into bad fuel drives up the price of corn and all foods and animal products.
That must be why I’m having to buy same day expired hamburger. :0)
No inflation? Are you outta your mind? Inflation is running rampant. The last seven years are the worst I have ever seen. A Quick example. Quart of oil, 2007? 85 cents. Quart of oil 2015? $4.00.
With regards to hamburger, aren’t high beef prices the result of drought (hits supply) and increasing demand? Basically, market forces? (Sort of the flip side of oil: huge supply glut, global demand down ...b/c of the depression).
There was a major drought in the last two years, and this adversely affected beef prices. But add into that the increased cost of the stupid ethanol program. (where billions of tons of corn are turned into fuel instead of feeding animals and people)
When you take umpteen tons of corn out of the food supply chain, farmers substitute other grains to feed their livestock. This drives the price up for all grain commodities.
This not only affects the United States food prices, but thanks to commodities markets, it affects world wide food prices. I've read that the riots in Egypt were the result of people being unable to afford food due to the rise in grain prices.
I've read that the "Arab Spring" is what happens when you turn corn into fuel because stupid left wing nutjobs and crony capitalist industrial farm outfits collaborate to make government policy.
In truth rising prices are NOT inflation! In economics inflation is an increase in the amount of currency in circulation. Think of inflating a tire, pumping air into the tire is inflation, the fact that the car may be seen to rise slightly higher above the ground is the result of inflation. Likewise rising prices are the result of inflation, not inflation itself but prices may rise for other reasons. If some prices are going up and some down as we have had lately there may be inflation or there may not be. Prices may rise or fall due to a supply/demand change but if prices in general are rising it is most likely due to monetary inflation. Monetary deflation should cause most prices to fall.
What the government has done for years is to tailor the method of calculating cost of living to produce a lower official inflation rate without much regard for reality. Younger people are easier to fool with that kind of trickery, those who, like myself, are past seventy know the truth about the past. We have seen the time when whole families lived on a month’s income that only amounts to maybe one decent day’s pay or at most two days of mediocre pay now. I remember having a long conversation about what a person could do with three hundred dollars a week and coming to an agreement that no sane person could possibly ever have any real need for more money than that. Anyone but an incurable wastrel would live really, really well on half that and bank the rest.
“I don’t know all of this with any certainty. Just trying to advance the conversation here.....”
You’re on the right track. People tend to see any price rise in familiar items as a result of inflation but food price hikes can be caused by crop failure or the killing off of animal herds for disease or because government regulation increases the costs of farmers.
Foreign demand also drives up our prices- we made China wealthy and they now compete with us to buy things, food included.
True inflation is a monetary event that causes widespread price hikes in everything, not just food or some other particular sector.
Inflation will reveal itself in rising interest rates because bond investors will demand an inflation premium. Interest rates have been miniscule since the beginning of Dubya’s term, this isn’t what you see in an inflationary environment.
But the shrink-ray on non-fresh food is disconcerting.