Inflation: Not as low as you think
AP Photo/Ben Margot
Forget the modest 3.1 percent rise in the Consumer Price Index, the government's widely used measure of inflation. Everyday prices are up some 8 percent over the past year, according to the American Institute for Economic Research.
The not-for-profit research group measures inflation without looking at the big, one-time purchases that can skew the numbers. That means they don't look at the price of houses, furniture, appliances, cars, or computers. Instead, AIER focuses on Americans' typical daily purchases, such as food, gasoline, child care, prescription drugs, phone and television service, and other household products.
The institute contends that to get a good read on inflation's "sticker shock" effect, you must look at the cost of goods that the average household buys at least once a month and factor in only the kinds of expenses that are subject to change. That, too, eliminates the cost of housing because when you finance your home with a fixed-rate mortgage, that expense remains constant until you refinance or move.
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The group maintains that this index better measures the real-world impact of price changes, particularly for people on a budget. And, largely as the result of the recent run-up in gas prices, this "everyday price index" (EPI) suggests that Americans are being pinched far more tightly than the official inflation measure would have you believe.
Over the past year, the EPI is up just over 8 percent, according to the economics group. The biggest factor: Motor fuel and transportation costs are up 21.06 percent from year-ago levels. The cost of food, prescription drugs, and tobacco also have increased faster than the government's inflation measure, rising 3.56 percent, 4.21 percent, and 3.4 percent, respectively.
On the bright side, prices of household fuel (natural gas and electricity) and supplies have increased only 2.74 percent; recreation and personal care products are up less than 1 percent; and telephone or Internet services are down 0.66 percent.
Admittedly, the purchases that the EPI tracks make up slightly less than 40 percent of the average household budget. But Steven Cunningham, research and education director at AIER, says these items are what contribute to the "sticker shock at the gasoline pump and the supermarket check-out line."
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There has been class warfare going on," Buffett, 81, said in a Sept. 30 interview with Charlie Rose on PBS. It's just that my class is winning. And my class isn't just winning, I mean we're killing them."
"My friends and I have been coddled long enough by a billionaire-friendly Congress." - Billionaire Warren Buffett, in a New York Times op-ed on Aug. 15.
OBEY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Obey your ruling-class masters, corporate USA, wealthy/powerful special-interest groups and the immense bureaucracies designed to subjugate you and to keep you foul disgusting commoners away from the deserving few atop the the socio-economic hierarchy/
OBEY and apply even more firmly your mental slave-chains your brainwashed miniscule minds so eagerly accept to please your masters.
Remember to rush off to vote to alter your "slave status" since your vote makes "real change" in the embedded power structure systems inevitable just as that belief has been proven to be oh-so true in the past.
Right? Uhhhhh......... well..........
Just quit thinking, even that itty-bitty bit you brainwashed idiots.....
just bleat the "blame" at those damnable Dems or Repubs or lefties or righties or liberals or conservatives or whoever or whatever your implanted-by-others "enemy" happens to be.
Just remember to OBEY YOUR MASTERS!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Maybe this will help make the danger of fiat money clear.
Imagine you and me are setting across from each other. We create enough money to represent all of the world's wealth. Each one of us has one SUPER Dollar in front of him.
You own half of everything and so do I.
I'm the government though. I get bribed into creating a Central Bank.
You're not doing what I want you to be doing so I print up myself eight more SUPER Dollars to manipulate you with.
All of a sudden your SUPER Dollar only represents one tenth of the wealth of the world!
That isn't the only thing though. You need to get busy and get to work because YOU'VE BEEN STIFFED with the bill for the money I PRINTED UP to get YOU TO DO what I WANTED.
That to me represents what has been happening to the economy, and us, and why so many of our occupations just can't keep up with the fake money presses.
So what? We still have not approached the level of national debt to GDP that existed during the 1940's and we recovered quite nicely from that debt. If you will recall, following the great crash of 1929 our country experienced the Great Depression and did not crawl out of it until the large amount of economic stimulus created by WWII. Anybody who yells the sky is falling because of the current level of the national debt is just emulating Chicken Little.
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The 1940's? Had the wheel even been invented yet back then? You want to equate the current debt scenario to the 1940's? How can you expect anyone to take that argument seriously?
The answer should be obvious to everyone who can be honest about things.
3% inflation is well north of 200%. Remember this is a compounding function.
2% on the 2% from last year on the 2% from the year before etc.
This is why its so hard to actually save for retirement - if you cannot "beat" inflation by a decent amount, you are net behind. You have to figure in taxes as well, as once you take the money out of retirement accounts they are taxed.
I would guess that actual inflation historically is far in excess of the b.s. 2-3% the govt puts out. Anything that anyone actually uses on a regular basis is filtered out. Anything that "throws off" the calculation to a value not wanted is thrown out.
In 1920, 1oz gold coin = 20.00. In 2012, that = ~1750.00
To arrive at this number, it takes a ~5% increase on average per year to get there. Assuming gold is a decent proxy for inflation, this tells you inflation over the last 92 years is around 5% annually. To beat this (after taxes and fees) one would have to earn at least 8% just to stay even - 8% average for 92 years.
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http://photos.imageevent.com/stokeybob/followthemoney/30DJIA.jpg
This one is the why.
http://photos.imageevent.com/stokeybob/followthemoney/Supersingle640x537.jpg
inflation is one percent this year, 5 since 2008.
"Inflation is everywhere a monetary policy"
PRICES ARE NOT INFLATION.
Inflation year on year 2011-2012 is ONE PERCENT according to BLS.
"Forget the modest 3.1 percent rise in the Consumer Price Index, the government's widely used measure of inflation."
Prices are not inflation. Inflation is an increase in MONEY SUPPLY according to the ECONOMIST Friedman (and general macro economic theory), not some hack reporter with CBS
And when Obama or Democrats point to the Stock Market and say, "Hey its getting better. Its climbing to new levels." Those numbers do reflect the massive amounts of inflation.
I'm sorry, but the republicans are not the ones running up 1.5 trillion dollar deficits per year.... This causes the FED to monetize debt because China and Japan are not buying it anymore.
Monetizing the debt causes INFLATION. You cannot spin this to anything but Obama's INTENTIONAL and DELIBERATE effects of his policies.
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