By many metrics, the US economy is humming along. The jobs market is robust; consumers are spending again; and inflation has eased to a three-year low.
It was never a realistic expectation for prices to go back to what they were before COVID, but somehow that is what people expected.
You never want to see prices come down across the board because that causes deflation. Deflation can very easily spiral into a feedback loop of higher interest rates and higher unemployment.
Any of these sorts of metrics have at least some issues. There are always issues with weighting different variables and excluded data due to the complexity of what’s being measured.
Because prices are still jacked up from inflation? Seems like they go up but never come back down?
Gee, ya think?
It was never a realistic expectation for prices to go back to what they were before COVID, but somehow that is what people expected.
You never want to see prices come down across the board because that causes deflation. Deflation can very easily spiral into a feedback loop of higher interest rates and higher unemployment.
Well, we were told the problem was supply chain issues, then that resolved and was supplanted by inflation.
The financial issues feel unrelenting at this point.
The supply chain issues directly led to inflation. That scarcity leads to a rise in prices is economics 101.
The article makes a misleading statement about inflation right off the bat. That it’s at a three year low and that’s a sign of good things.
But inflation doesn’t work like that. This just means prices are increasing at a slower rate. Not that prices have gone down.
Also inflation is not a measure of the cost of living. CPI is ostensibly a measure of cost of living but it’s not particularly good at that either
CPI is fine when it isn’t manipulated to hell like the government does to make things seem better than they actually are.
Any of these sorts of metrics have at least some issues. There are always issues with weighting different variables and excluded data due to the complexity of what’s being measured.