CBS News joins the moron brigade:
Prices in March rose 3.5% from a year ago, accelerating inflation for the third straight month. For U.S. consumers, that means spending more, but actually buying less. CBS News' @jolingkent breaks down prices where some Americans are feeling it the most: the grocery store.
Here's the truth about the grocery store:
Since the start of 2023, the price of food has increased 1.2%. Average earnings have gone up 4.3%.
Inflation in groceries has been close to zero for over a year and has been negative for the past two months. When are our news outlets finally going to figure this out?
POSTSCRIPT: And in case you're interested, here are food and earnings since before the pandemic:
Food is up 27%. Earnings are up 30%.
Yabbut have you SEEN the prices of [cherry-picked commodity] recently?!? Why, *I* remember when it was 25% lower!!! [Narrator: that was 15 years ago]
Crisis sells. And the MSM are always primed for negative stories about an incumbent Democrat because something something Truth To Power something if-both-sides-are-criticizing-us-we-must-be-doing-it-right.
However, in this case, Kevin is being actively dishonest. Weekly earnings increase when people work more hours or work overtime. But they are still having to work longer to pay their grocery bills.
As for his averages from before the pandemic, Kevin is starting his graph from end of 2018. If you start it at start of 2020 (before pandemic hit US) you will see a huge increase in prices compared to weekly earnings.
Check this out... doesn't look nearly as OK.
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=1k6xz
There are liars, damned liars, and statisticians.
Why is your cherry-picked date honest but Kevin's starting date a lie?
The more important piece is that people think that any wage increase was their doing, and inflation is being done to them.
Well, if you want to ask "Are you better off now than you were four years ago" and to compare with a time before the pandemic hit (which Kevin also agreed with) then what date do you think is better than Jan 1 2020?
People aren't working overtime - weekly hours are now about 34, close to the average since 2004:
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/AWHAETP
A lot of people can get only part time work and would gladly get more hours if they could.
None of Kevin’s screaming into the void matters. People remember when [grocery item] cost [price] and by God it needs to remain that price forever or all their household finances will go to hell. (Somehow households survived grocery store items going from being priced in cents a few generations ago to being priced in dollars nowadays, and the world did not end in the 20th Century when this happened. But that was before Republicans and conservative media learned how to make every positive economic story (lowest unemployment rate / highest wage increases / largest jump in the stock market in decades!) that occurs under a Democrat somehow Bad For Every American.)
Ideas have long, long, unimaginably long, lives, all evidence to the contrary, progress in understanding things notwithstanding;
Just Price theory:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Just_price
Food comprises about one-fourth of the typical budget. Focusing on food because it's experiencing higher inflation than other items is falling into the same fallacy as focusing on eggs or tomatoes or kumquats or whatever cherry-picked commodity you can find that's experiencing higher than average inflation. The wage increases workers get apply to EVERYTHING they buy, not just food.
Oh RIGHT, and next thing you'll be telling me is that money is fungible, and that different items have different inflation rates, and that we need to pay attention to increases in INCOME and not just prices!
Just how dumb do you think we ARE?!?
"Inflation" does get too much attention. What matters is whether you can buy what you need and want. And that depends much more on whether the economy is producing what people want and need, and much less on what the central bank and the Treasury do about money supply or interest rates.
That said, it is true that businesses need stability and predictability, and inflation does cause problems for firms and households. But I think much of the establishment horror of inflation is aimed at desires for interest rate increases.
Inflation is a stand in for inequality. Even if inflation moderates, people feel set free to complain about high prices because they can And so they will.
It would help if people weren't so allergic to actual attempts to address inequality.
This is the real crux of the problem. Perception. The perception that their dollars are becoming powerless, especially at the bottom, and that the government is coming for them at the top. So both ends complain. But only one end sees action.
"Food is up 27%. Earnings are up 30%."
In other words, after accounting for taxes on that 30% increase it is a 25% increase, so people are 2% behind ?
Earnings are up 30% before or after taxes, unless you are bumped into a higher bracket.
Inflation is a bear for retirees with pensions. SS adjusts with inflation, but many pensions do not. Ergo, relative total earnings decline over time. I guess it's nice that earnings for workers have gone up, but it only helps retirees with fixed incomes if Sis and Junior "share" their earnings with their retired parents. I guess the parents could go back to work. Explains the aged 70+ folks I see working the checkout lines at Walmart.
Actually, I am not aware of any actual pensions that do not adjust with inflation.
Can you please document your claim?
It is possible to buy an annuity that does not adjust for inflation, but that is not a pension.
Tax-deferred retirement accounts, which have been taking the place of defined-benefit company pensions, do not adjust explicitly for inflation. You or the fund manager could presumably beat inflation with the right investments. But those accounts have other problems, as Kevin discussed in another post.
Yeah - pensions have become kind of rare in the high tech industry. That started happening over 30 years ago, about the time I left DEC for EMC in 1995.
Based on the experiences of family members, state employee pensions do not have meaningful COLAs in GA, NC, and WI. Also, I have several relatives who got screwed out of their pensions when the companies they worked for (40 years in one case) declared bankruptcy. The federal laws that "protect" company pensions are a joke.
A view of the public employee pension landscape:
https://equable.org/public-pensions-protected-from-inflation/