Posted on 11/17/2007 10:16:45 AM PST by shrinkermd
Why would you divide 25 by 37 in that context?
Not true. See links in posts 308 and 309.
I am not going to teach you two guys chart reading and arithmetic.
You didn't mean that an increase of $25,000 over 37 years (namely $675.68 per year), is the same as saying this is a 0.67568% each year.
My guess is you meant that the growth of $63k to $88k is a factor of 1.4 over 37 years; which is the same as multiplying $63k by 1.009 --again and again 37 times until we can get $88k. In other words: 37√1.4 = 1.009, or 1.00937=1.4.
yes, I agree that you are right in terms of how to calculate this precisely. I still don’t think that .9% per annum government advertised growth in personal income based on government advertised CPI is stunning or, in your words “soaring.” Again, a 1% error in govenrment CPI calculations would make the actual growth negative, and given HOW the CPI is calculated (with substitutions, geometric and hedonic corrections) I don’t know why you would choose to believe it as a correct methodology.
Obviously not.
yes, I agree that you are right in terms of how to calculate this precisely.
That number sounds very familiar.
I love this guy!
That is three serious questions, and not one invitation for another childish snear.
You're right. Your weakness in math is a distraction from your lack of knowledge in other areas.
First, is .9% per year average income growth "soaring,"
Over and above inflation. Maybe you should compare that number to the income growth in some other developed nations?
second, is it even real
Compared to the numbers John Williams comes up with?
why is personal income only growing at 1%?
Do you really want me to explain what else is included in GDP?
Thanks for playing.
Not true. See links in posts 308 and 309.
John Williams said a lot about why his methods are great, but he's never said just what they are. He's not even willing to part with the index set itself --the link just goes to some $90 toll booth with no guarantee of results.
No problem; we reverse engineer it and find out that since 1980 the CPI says average prices for urban consumers has gone up 2.7 times, while Williams pegs true inflation at a factor of 6.3. Now let's look at the costs of some of the things we buy and check how expensive they've gotten:
Since 1980-- |
Price multiple |
Medical Care | 4.99 |
Construction Materials | 2.47 |
Food | 2.19 |
Unskilled labor | 2.15 |
Gold | 1.00 |
Oil | 2.37 |
Average: | 2.53 |
That 6.3 factor seems high, but there's no way of telling how he came up with his numbers..
Something else I can't figure out is what good the SGS index is, other than for making money for Williams and for saying Bush is a miserable failure. I mean, none of us are about to insist on paying three times as much for food just for the sake of "fairness".
Dang, I can't keep up with y'all --busy day at the market today...
Using the other .gif with the SGS index, I approximated some values for it using his graph and back figured what his index is (superimposed plot below).
The thing is, if we believe that the SGS is true inflation then we've got to say that all the other prices are plummeting. I mean, look at the prices of milk and potatoes even.
I'm wondering if John Williams would say that gold is under priced by a factor of seven these days, or would he say it was overvalued by the same amount in 1980?
I am not going to teach you chart reading and arithmetic.
Look and the PCE/CPI contrast in post 298. Sometimes one goes up and the other goes down. That's because they use prices for different things and they weight other items differently. The way CPI and SGS track so consistently, it looks like all he did was take the same numbers and move them over. In fact, he may have not even needed a spreadsheet at all --I say that his graphs were done with Photoshop and Yours Truly has the only existing data set on the index.
In view of the fact that y'all are my good buddies, I'm willing to share the numbers for just $87.50.
Hmmmm...
Close. Try to cut off everything to the left on '83 or '84. Then rotate it.
left of
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