Go buy a pound of cheese, bacon, or hamburger etc. These people don’t know in the hell they are talking about.
The CPI which is NOT inflation, is rejiggered every year to show a lower rate of price increase. It is said to not show actual inflation if people substitute pork for beef or cat food for Tuna so the prices of pork and cat food are substituted for those of beef and tuna. The reality is that the dollar buys less value of food even if the quantity remains unchanged. When people can afford to buy only corn and beans then corn and beans will be substituted for the rest of the menu in the CPI to show that the price of food has not increased.
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.....
You are simply not taking into account the greater benefits of your new bluetooth remote. It is so, so, so much better than the old Wi-Fi versions and it costs less. So we subtract a little bit of "Cost of Living" due to this greater utility.
We, the Gods who Compute the Cost of Living Index do this many, many times for anything we like. LOL. We get to redefine that good old Basket of Goods every year. And the Yokels buy it. LOL. LOL.
Many people underestimate the effects of low employment growth, productivity, low or negative income growth, negative income and wealth effect, relative to pre-Great Recession period (in large part due to fiscal and regulatory policies of Obama administration) as well as cheaper production of many goods and services due to automation, disunionization and importation of deflationary or disinflationary trends from parts of Europe and Asia, and more recently huge "tax cut" for consumers in the form of lower oil / gasoline and energy (coal, NG) and commodities (iron, steel, copper etc.) prices which dampened the rise of consumer prices (different sectors are affected differently to these inputs) which are countering generally inflationary administration policies, like ObamaCare, rabid "environmentalism," financial regulations etc. etc. ...
From The Bacon-Cheeseburger Index - B (sub), by Robin Goldwyn Blumenthal, 2015 October 03
Janet Yellen is plotting the monetary future using complex data points that consider inflation, employment, and productivity. But one brokerage is resorting to more tangible evidence: bacon cheeseburgers. Nicholas Colas, chief market strategist at Convergex, a global brokerage based in New York, tracks "off the grid" economic indicators. He found that measuring the prices of ingredients in a bacon cheeseburger can determine the impact of inflation. Colas tracked prices for ground beef, cheese, and bacon since 1980 — he left off the bun "in deference to history and those on a low-carb diet." It turns out the bacon-cheeseburger index reveals deflation over the past few months. On a year-over-year basis, the ingredients fell 2.9% in June, 1.2% in July, and 2.7% in August. Historically, bacon-cheeseburger deflation has signaled a slowing economy, he notes. "Go back through the price history, and negative 3% to 4% price declines for bacon cheeseburgers are often a sign that the Fed needs to cut interest rates and push liquidity into the domestic economy. I know that sounds weird, but the last time our bacon cheeseburger showed negative price trends of this magnitude was in 2009. Before that, it was 1998 [Asia crisis] and 1991-92 [Gulf War I]." Will Yellen heed the warning and delay rate hikes? Colas urges her to sink her teeth into this issue: "Even if bacon cheeseburgers aren't on the cafeteria menu at Fed HQ, Chair Yellen would do well to heed the sizzle of deflationary pressures." Uh-oh: The last time the bacon-cheeseburger index showed deflationary trends of this magnitude was 2009.
Also have to keep in mind that "inflation" or more properly, CPIs, are measured year-over-year, so comparing the price of certain goods or services today to the prices of decade ago is not a proper measurement of consumer price increases or decreases.
Also, the increase in money supply (or more accurately in this case, US Dollar supply) whichever Mx you want to use, will not necessarily show up in consumer price increases, since it's used and in high demand all over the world, even at a ZIRP rate, since quite a few countries have effective negative interest rate of return.