The Fed's preferred measure of inflation, PCE, remained very low in June:
On a conventional year-over-year basis, headline PCE came in at 2.5% and core PCE was 2.6%.
13 thoughts on “PCE inflation stays low in June”
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Cats, charts, and politics
Why This Is Bad News For Dems
A Times Analysis
But the price of a Big Mac is up!
the economist piece.
It's in anticipation of Trump returning to the White House!
Or
Crooked Joe Biden is manipulating the numbers!
Republicans will still say inflation is higher than ever. And the NYT and cable news will allow them to say that without any comment.
Yeah, but prices haven't come back down to where they were before inflation kicked in!
It still surprises me that expectation is a thing. So much so that "Marketplace" on NPR a few months back ran this whole 5 minute segment, done by one of their 20's something interns, explaining how "inflation ending" really just meant a big slow down in the rate of prices rises, and not a reversion to the old prices. If an audience listening to a financial show on NPR needs it explained, what hope is there for the other 99% of the country?
There's no hope for "the other 99% of the country", except that they [we] will eventually die and finally not care any longer. Until then they [we] will always be dissatisfied, because the 1% is ahead of them [us], and that's not what God intende for THEM or us!
I know, it's completely illogical, but it's what they [we] believe in their [our] heart of hearts. "I'm special!" is the root of all evil, not money.
Let's say you're poor and the two things you spend most of your money on are (1) rent and (2) food, but you're not poor enough to qualify for government assistance, or maybe you disqualify yourself for personal reasons. Following a period of very high inflation, unless rent and prices for food nominally decreased, you're still getting hit by inflation and it hurts.
Politicians telling you inflation is down doesn't ring true to your ears, but people mocking you for believing that inflation remains high is what pushes you over the edge.
Sure, many of them are Republicans, but some of them were probably conservative Democrats or blue collar workers, which may account for the shift of blue collar voters.
This is my theory of why Biden couldn't regain his footing despite falling inflation and his frequent reference to it.
I don't get your point. We know that real wage gains were good for those at the bottom of the income scale. True some people got left behind but that is literally always true.
Did they? https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=1qGa8
Do you not think that 2020 was an unusual year for income statistics? It sure looks like it was. Use 2019 as your base year, and you get a graph showing that the income of the bottom quintile outpaced consumer prices between 2019 and 2022. And when figures for 2023 are released, we'll see that incomes gains got even stronger compared to price increases, which moderated during 2023.
Using 2020 as a baseline makes it relative to the inflationary period. Using 2019 as a baseline would make it relative to the start of the pandemic-triggered recession and would give a false sense of soaring incomes due to the stimulus "checks", which were erased by inflation for rent and food.
That is why.
You can't use 2020 as a baseline for anything.