Very few people? If you want to talk about logical fallacies, right out the gate you're appealing to the bandwagon. China wanted crypto out because it operates on rails outside of their control. Actually, to be more precise, they did not want crypto out, only that which wasn't under their control. They want to implement the digital yuan, if you can consider that a crypto, which would allow them to survey and control the movement of money among their citizens.
It's not a red herring. You think that inflation is being driven by the cost of used cars? It's the other way around. The costs are being driven by inflation. It's a symptom of the rampant money printing done last year alone. And if you paid more attention to the markets, you'd know that this is only the latest sector to experience this. We have/had housing, lumber, other commodities, equities, crypto and virtually everything across the board see these huge rises due in part to inflation. CPI numbers released a couple of weeks ago were at their highest levels since '08, and we have the fed coming out saying that it's "transitory."
I'm not an economist, but I believe that wages tend to rise to keep pace with inflation, but that doesn't change the fact that the same dollar amount back then has had the majority of its purchasing power eroded away. Case in point: $55 a month earned back then and saved in the bank would be just that in today's world, plus the likely negligible interest. So that's pretty much irrelevant and missing the point. If instead that money had been parked in the form of gold or stocks, it would have maintained its relative purchasing power.
Yeah, it is very, very obvious that you have never taken a course in economics, much less an economist. Your beliefs are not backed up by data. For starters, wages haven't kept up with inflation since the oil shocks of the '70s.
Let me break it down for you - if I go too fast, pop a flare, and I will find you.
The "inflation" number that you are so confused about is generated by a "basket" of goods and services that are measured in each Fed region on a monthly basis. The items in the basket change from time to time - if you want to make the top line inflation rate go down (or up), take out one item and replace it with another - any time the economy goes in the toilet, the numbers are every so slightly adjusted to make it not look so bad. In addition, this is seasonally adjusted. This is done is so that economists can separate structural issues from seasonal issues. It also confuses the hell out of anyone that hasn't actually taken a course in
the dismal science. And economics isn't a science, btw; in science, you can't ignore any data that doesn't support your theory - See
Supply side economics as one of the most obvious examples.
People are rational actors in business is the one that cracks me up the most. Or
The Free Market - Newsflash, the only place a
Free Market exists is in a textbook.
Back to the data (as opposed to the top line), you would see that the 2 items in the basket that are driving the inflation is used cars & car rentals (Each are up around 10%; Why are car rentals in the basket? I don't know, but they are. I don't think they should be, but I don't actually work at the Fed.) OTOH, a LOT of people didn't travel last year, so we are seeing two years of traveling, but the car rental agencies don't have twice as many cars - so how much do you want to pay to rent a sedan for a week? JIT (Just In Time Inventory in action - just like plane tickets, through the joy of automation - and this is showing up more and more places - like our inability to get graphics cards - to get back on subject.) This is also known as supply and demand. BTW, yeah those inflation levels are transitory - that is what happens every single time the economy comes out of a recession, hence the '08 that you mention aka THE LAST RECESSION. Again, basic Econ 101 - if you want, you can look at the data for every recession for the past 100+ years.
This also shows up in the BLS (Bureau of Labor Standards) database. If you dig through that for instance, you see how the last president was elected. The states that voted for him never came out of recession (the main drivers for every single one of those states, 8 years, were fast food and "alternative finance" i.e. pawn shops and payday loans.) They aren't voting for more of the same; whereas the places that voted for the other candidate were driving the economy forward and pulling those other states along. The top line looked good, state level, not so much.
You will see the same thing with the Unemployment rate - there is the U-3 (
10 hours a week is full employment) rate that you see on the news, and then there is the real unemployment rate, the U-6 (
I ain't got enough hours to make the rent). That is why European unemployment rates look higher than US rates - European nations report the U-6, not the U-3. The data is always available, but that doesn't mean that it is properly distributed through the media. (
Dirty Laundry by the Eagles is spot on.)
Similar issue with the lumber costs that you mention - very little lumber got made last year, while people stuck at home decided to tackle that home improvement project at the house. Supply and Demand. And yet another example of why supply side economics doesn't actually work. Good news - lumber prices peaked back in May - it has dropped 50% since them. We still have an overhang since many lumber yards bought at the top of the cycle. It will be back to normal in another quarter or so.
That was $650 per YEAR (1913, start of the Federal Reserve) not week. Google prices in 1913 and try to figure out how far that goes - and it is a much, much lower standard of living. Indoor plumbing was an option, electricity wasn't, insulation was via plaster and YOU would be the one building it- unless you were living in a tenement with multiple families per apt and bathrooms down the hall in the slums of a city.
50% of Americans were farmers then btw. Pro tip - if you are concerned about the collapse of civilization, don't invest in gold - invest in seeds. You can't eat gold, not to mention that buying gold today isn't buying actual gold - it is buying gold certificates - and at $1,800 per ounce - you ain't buying any.
BTW, we aren't seeing "huge" rises due to inflation (5% in the quarter of coming out of a recession) - Go visit the 70' sometime kid, and learn about both real inflation and more importantly, stagflation. Lots and lots of things have been put into place to prevent inflation from going wild (mostly for the benefit of the 1% - The Fed tends to ignore it's second mandate - striving for full employment). All of you that think the Fed is a bad idea - I suggest you look at what it was like before then - you want no part of that (20 years of recession at a time, for instance)
Wages haven't kept up with inflation since the oil shocks of the 1970. When women moved into the workforce in mass during the '70's - it wasn't for feminism - it was because 1 wage earner couldn't keep a family above water in the 70's. This is around the same time corporations stole the pension funds and convinced their workforce that 401ks were the way to go. The average GenX (working for almost 40 years) has around $160k to cover them for the rest of their lives. That is about 5 years of my defined benefits pension. (That is why I chose a career in the military - pension, medical, 5 - 10% off from various companies, and the opportunity to blow stuff up from time to time. You can thank me for my service now.)
If you are concerned about "money printing" - where the hell were you during the Reagan, Bush I, Bush II, or tRump administration. Spend some quality time in the Fed database, and the BLS database. I doubt you have the base line economic literacy to understand what you are looking at, but maybe you could figure it out. Always remember - deficits don't matter, 90% is owed to us. And based on 200+ years of historical data - a balanced budget is not actually a good thing. Most people don't understand that the US economy doesn't work like their household checkbook.
Example - a gold based economy means the world economy is controlled by the countries that have the largest gold reserves in the ground - Russia & South Africa. And it only takes 1 major gold rush to wreck that entire economy. In addition, there isn't enough gold in the earth's crust to support the world economy.
Pro-tip - take a look at the stock market from 1922 to 1932. If you had invested heavily in 1913, you didn't live long enough to recover. ANYTHING in stocks would have been wiped out in the '29 crash. The Dow lost 89% of it's value, not 8.9% - it took WWII, Pax Americana, and the 90% top marginal tax rate for the stock market to recover.
I was in the market during the '87 crash and the '99 tech crash, but successfully avoided the '08 crash and the '20 crash. I didn't see the '87 crash coming, but in '99, I listened to my broker rather than believing my lying eyes, and lost almost everything I had built up since the '87 crash. I watched a bunch of my co workers get wiped out in '07. Most of them didn't believe me when I explained to them what the term "volatility" meant. They got to learn just like I did, but most of them were at the end of their careers, rather than halfway through it.
The asset bubbles you are concerned with are the result of tax code - and they can be fixed via the tax code (and the penal code, but I digress....) And as long as financial firms can index front running, the stock market is 1st and foremost, a casino.
Remember - less than half of the US has ANY connection to the stock market. They don't own stocks, or bonds, and they don't have pensions or a 401k. Hell, nearly half of all American families can't cover an unprogrammed bill of $400.
Glad I could share the knowledge with you.
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