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It’s O-fficial. Since Biden/Harris took office, the official inflation gauge is up over 20%. 20.2% to be precise. The just-released numbers for October were up 2.6%. That increase is in line with the acceleration of the money supply.
That means regular Americans are farther behind than my last estimate.
Biden/Harris
Earnings +18.5% Inflation + 20.2% Net Loss – 1.7%
Regular Americans did better under Trump than under Obama and MUCH better than they are under Biden/Harris.
And the official inflation numbers are calculated differently than they were in the past. The methods were changed in the 1980s to make the official numbers smaller than they’d otherwise be.
The CPI used to measure a fixed market basket of goods and services. It used to measure the cost of maintaining a constant standard of living. No more. Now, if, for example, steak gets more expensive, the boffins at BLS decrease the amount of steak in the market basket and substitute less expensive chicken. While this method reflects actual consumer behavior in the market, it dilutes CPI’s usefulness. Including substitutions means that CPI is now an amalgam of both price changes and standard of living changes. During periods of high inflation, prices go up, AND because of substitutions, the relative standard of living declines. Yet the standard of living portion is obscured and not readily visible.
How big of a difference are we talking about? It’s big. For instance, back in 2022, when the official inflation number was 9%, calculating things the old way would have given an inflation rate of almost 17%.
So when the “feel good” adjusted number is over 20% you know things are bad.
Discussion (32)
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Clearly it is time for one last revision to rebut this. Drop items from the CPI survey with the highest price rise, rejigger the time frame, apply a new adjustment figure and voila!
Maybe Harris could have won if Biden had sent FBI SWAT teams to seize and perp-walk some local grocery chain store managers before the cameras in a multi-state raid on price-fixing of eggs and Rice Crispies thus sending a message to CEOs of Big Food. Liz Warren, Joy Reid and AOC would have applauded.
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Wow.
Is there someone out there who tracks all this via both methods over time? That would be an interesting graph...
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ouch. That's gonna leave a mark. I was predicting 25% from the Biden war on Energy. Let's see if Trump can get -10% for his third term.
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More Growth. Less Spending. No Duh.
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There needs to be more efficiency to lower prices. Our economy is filled with all kinds of imposed inefficiencies. For example, income tax compliance is $400 Billion/year. We put about $1 Trillion/year into college education, surely half of that wasted. We spend about $5 Trillion on medical stuff, surely 25% of that is wasted--probably 50%. Note, GDP might fall as wages for productive workers go up.
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