Just for fun, here's an updated chart that shows the inflation rate for various categories of goods and services:
Used cars and trucks are up 45.2%! What the hell is going on?
This time I've included figures for Drum household personal hobbies. Photo equipment is up 5.9%, which is tolerable. However, sewing machines are up 13.3%. I hope Marian isn't planning to buy a new sewing machine any time soon.¹
¹Anyway, what we really need is the world's best buttonholer, even if the price is high. Buttonholes are the big challenge around here.
Used cars and trucks are up 45.2%! What the hell is going on?
There's a shortage of computer chips (for assorted reasons, mostly tied to the former guy's trade wars), which in turn leads to fewer new cars being built, which leads to increased demand for used cars, which leads to higher prices.
I can also add a specific anecdote, I just bought a used small pickup after spending months looking for one. The demand for them is high and prices are way up because the stupid manufacturers quit making them more than 10 years ago and think the only truck anyone wants is a giant monster. There is a decent market of people like me who want a small pickup as a second vehicle to use for the occasional trip to Home Depot or hauling some kayaks to the lake, stuff like that, don't need a full size truck with 4 doors and 4 wheel drive, and don't need to hauls a ton of weight. A simple 2 wheel drive half ton with a small bed is perfect. I may not drive many miles in it but still getting 20 MPG vs 12 adds up.
My 98 Tacoma has 240k miles, the driver door handle is broken, and sometimes while I'm driving the speedometer points to zero. I have been looking for a replacement new truck for years, but they are all too big.
A lot of people feel this way. I've had several strangers ask me if they can buy it. I tell them if I could find a new one that wasn't a monster truck I would sell it.
yeah the size creep of the Tacoma is a great example, the new ones and the ones from the 90s are completely different classes of truck
Something similar has happened with Jeep Wranglers though I'm not sure about the price or availability since I'm not in the market. But six years ago when I was it was hard to find a plain old two door model, which was the usual sort of Wrangler for many years. These cars were intended to be fun, sporty vehicles for people who seldom have more than one passenger and often none at all, and not family cars. But now they increasingly look like mini-Hummers (and are correspondingly as ugly) . Even my 2015 two door model is bigger than the old 2004 model I used to have-- and it's also harder to park as a result. Why do the car companies,. including most of the foreign ones, insist on foisting oversized behemoths on us when many of us want something more efficient? Yes, there should be big cars and trucks for those who want/need them, but the modest ones should not be left to history!
You damned boomers are just to lazy to learn to do buttonholes by hand. My mom taught me to do that when real men did buttonholes manually!!!
Trying to Ford the the River Styx that is the Coronavirus, Joe Biden feels Whipped.
The CPI conspicuously leaves out an entire category that may hit some households particularly hard: the price of stocks! The S&P (dividends included) has DOUBLED since last March! How can we talk about fears of inflation and not talk about the hyperinflation running rampant in an important sector of the economy that makes the rising price of used cars and trucks look almost normal? How are the average jane & joe ever going to afford Amazon at more than $3700 a share? If anything is going to kill this economic recovery, the surge in stock prices will likely be it.
[This may be stupid but don't be surprised if it's an argument we hear soon from GOPers. In a party where insurrectionists can be rebranded as patriotic heroes, why not?]
Try harder
Ordinarily, I'd laugh and say you'll get to eat your words before the end of the year, but if your friends at CNN can ignore their multiple lies, not to mention their hero Avenatti, when inflation gets around to food -- it's already starting, but it will be broadly visible -- Drum will do what "progressives" always do: Blame it on Fox News. LOL
That's why god made velcro.