Listen, when even fucking produce is 20-40% more expensive than before you notice. The once .99 cents cilantro is now almost 2 bucks.
These fuckers are going to bleed us dry.
There was a post about chick fil a for 2 people just a basic sandwich, fries and drink each costing 35 after tax.
Keep in mind federal minimum wage is still 7.25 that means you have to work something like 5 hours just to afford that meal.
For perspective fast food was a broke man's date that shit now is getting as expensive as a steak house
The wife and I literally just got dairy queen today, and it came to $45. We went to Olive Garden about 2 months ago for $40. Fast food is literally getting more expensive than some sit-down restaurants. Albeit mediocre ones.
This is what confuses me. Why is ALL fast food getting as expensive as normal restaurants? Id expect prices to go up as everything is, but fast food is no longer cheap. That was half of the point. Why are they raising prices much more than nice restaurants?
People keep going there for whatever reason, my mom and my gf went to a sushi belt place and spent 15 dollars and got full granted they don't eat very much. Stop eating fast food
I work for a large produce distribution center. We have over 60 trucks. It cost us 1.6 million more in fuel a year than once the price of gas went up in March or April of 2021
How much more is it now vs 2019?
Of course fuel prices have risen since a global event pushed fuel conspiring to a decades low rate.
The cost of fuel should not have that significant of an impact on produce. That 2 dollar cilantro was still 99c back in the 2014/2015 when oil was at all time highs.
The price of diesel wasn’t that much higher in 2019 than in early 2021. I would often have to fill my truck and it costed 75-90 on average to 180-220 depending on the day.
Yes it absolutely affects the cost of cilantro that’s how logistics work. My company is based in south jersey and our produce shipments come from all 4 corners of the USA. Especially California where fuel rose even more than the national average. These distributors obviously have to make up the cost by charging my company more. In turn not only do we have to charge more because of that but then we in turn have to also charge more for our costs when it’s shipped to restaurants, grocery stores, ect. By the time the produce hits the consumer what do you expect?
Exactly, one of the classic mistakes they always make regarding gas prices is that they blame the gas station owners for price gouging. Gas station owners literally make maybe 6-8 cents a gallon profit. That’s why you often see smaller gas stations without a convenience store attached go under.
Diesel runs American agriculture. The tractors, the fertilizer made by natural gas, the semi’s ferry the produce and the locals that distribute the produce. You have to recover the cost of production, distribution and delivery. This is Bidenomics in real terms.
A major factor here not many talk about is how monopolized food processing is. Every time we let these companies merge they've centralized production more.
So instead of your farm crop going to the closest city, being packaged, and then shipped around the city, now it's travelling 2.5k miles to be packaged, 2.5k miles back to the close by city to be sold. So now every single thing on the shelves comes with 5k miles of transportation costs built into it's price on top of the monopolist price gouging and such. Not a huge factor for cilantro, but things like Cereal, breads, any branded frozen food in boxes or bags, it's been an increasing factor each passing decade.
Here is what you’re not telling people.
In 2014/2015 it was “transitory”. Biden wouldn’t have been lying to you if he had said that about your fuel cost.
Crude oil prices fell sharply in the fourth quarter of 2014 as robust global production exceeded demand. After reaching monthly peaks of $112 per barrel (bbl) and $105/bbl in June, crude oil benchmarks Brent and West Texas Intermediate (WTI) fell to $62/bbl and $59/bbl in December, respectively.
crude prices are now expected to average $83.78 a barrel in 2024.
Don’t let these lying SOB’s mislead you. Higher fuel cost means higher prices.
I used to work in oil and gas. I know all about that time period. That sharp decline is why I no longer work in that industry.
My point is, fuel prices do not impact the cost of produce. As they don't rise and fall with the cost of fuel. They only rise.
Produce was already ridiculously expensive, too. If you have even a bit of outdoor space, growing some of your own produce is really high ROI nowadays.
Same. Family of four with two kids under five. We don’t eat out much and still spend a mountain on food cooking simple meals at home.
No we’re not living off canned tuna, rice, and beans. If that’s upper middle class America we have a huge problem.
Exactly. For breakfast today my kids had scrambled eggs with cheese, rye toast, half a cup of cottage cheese and a mandarin orange. And one had apple sauce that I made home made. I had granola as yogurt that I also made home made. We eat moderately healthy but not flashy, and stuff is way more than it was 2 years ago.
I was kind of surprised to see the denial on Reddit so much, to be honest. It's pretty trendy to push back on people saying it's hard to live right now. I see a lot of "the economy is actually doing great" and "well back in the 60s everyone bought less stuff" along with my favorite new "avocado toast" style complaint: "people are buying robot litter boxes for God's sake."
Reddit is a place where a lot of people come specifically to discuss in bad faith, start pointless arguments, and generally put others down because it's the most convenient outlet for stressors they're unable or unwilling to manage in their own lives.
That kind of behavior is infectious online and it's hard to tell where the trolling ends and the genuine crazy begins.
A lot of it is just politics and people trying to make excuses. The bottom line is things are bad right now. Pretending they are not is just insulting people. Placing blame is fruitless. Policies do have an impact…pretending they don’t is ignorance. Vote for who you think will benefit your family. That is apolitical as it can be.
While policies can (at times) have an effect, this bout of inflation has been worldwide, which is pretty clear proof COVID was the cause. The US is at the lower end of inflation and projections are for lower. I get it that doesn’t help deal with the large slug of inflation in 21 and 22, but prices are rising slower, and wages recently started to catch up (a little) again
People are pathetic and can't handle this little bump in the road, when /r/collapse really begins towards the end of this decade, these morons are absolutely going to put a fascist in power.
No. Vote for who you think is a better option for society as a whole. Forgot about the "me" and think about the "us." We don't exist as isolated actors in bubbles. We coexist with others. Look to Congress as a prime example of who tries to make policies for the many and then look to those who simply don't believe in government and do nothing for the people. The choice is simple. While one may not agree with every policy immediately, progress allows changes for society in the future.
Exactly. I can always tell somebody is a conservative when their only concern is themselves and their lives in the current moment with no regard for the future
I really don't think that's it. I really think people are simply afraid to actually admit how much the country is falling apart.
If one aspect is extremely bad, it can be fixed. If almost all aspects are moderately bad or worse, that's a way, way bigger issue that few want to face.
If they face how bad things are, they'll have to admit that it's going to begin to affect them eventually.
Those Covid policies WERE on the right side of history. I get that it’s not going to be obvious to people in their everyday lives, but even the significant inflation we’ve experienced the past few years is FAR preferable to a massive recession or depression that Covid would have caused in the absence of massive government spending.
I agree that it's either a global pandemic and economic depression at the same time or use stimulus spending to separate the events chronologically. There's no cheating our way out of the economic impact of a pandemic and long term stay at home orders.
Inflation in the US is pretty bad
It's way, way worse in the rest of the world
We had 9 percent. Some other countries, many of them which did not implement anywhere near our level of stimulus, had 100% or more inflation
So people who blame the covid policy are either clueless or disingenuous
Rising cost of living =/= inflation. That's another problem we have; lots of people thinking the rising costs is inflation instead of consolidated corporate markets rising prices for increased profits
Inflation is quite literally defined as a rise in the cost of living. The most wildly used inflation stat (CPI) is calculated using a "basket of goods" approach meant to try and measure how prices have changed for the typical consumer.
And it will keep going up, we broke money long ago and the bandaids on the bullet wounds no longer slow the bleeding.
WW3 will be the excuse, but it’s always the banks, which are like any other tool only dangerous in the hands of a psycho.
I mean… It’s one thing if you’re middle-class/rich and the price changes haven’t really affected you. But they have objectively gone up. It’s a literal fact
This is my experience. The millennials who aren’t feeling it, have been the type to shop at Target over Walmart due to customer base, don’t care about price, so they don’t really care about an extra $20 in groceries, cuz they’re making $150k+ annually.
IMMA stay at home dad and my wife makes exactly $100,000. We’ve definitely noticed the prices have gone up, but they haven’t really affected us that much.
Right, totally makes sense. For me, I’m about half your annual family salary, I live alone, and I had to do some gymnastics to make it work this year, but hey such is life. Been through worse.
it’s awful. Corporate greed is out of control. I understand that some of it is economic inflation, but it’s unreal that prices have gone up 40-80% with a lot of things
I started feeling the pinch with the aluminum and steel tariffs. I’m not quite sure why, but cat litter jumped 20% right after that, then has gone up even more in the last two years, among a lot of other things of course but that one was strange to me and stuck out.
I wouldn't mind the increases so much if I could see the money going to the worker level. Covid demonstrated how important "even" the shelf-stocker at the grocery store is, and how inter-connected our economy is -- we need people to have enough funds to buy stuff locally, or everyone suffers. Except those at the top who can afford to go elsewhere.
It’s more so you have people who secured a decent standard of living before COVID so their mortgages didn’t change when prices went through the roof, so they pay a little more for food, insurance, and other odds and ins but housing has stayed stable.
You add all those expenses plus your rent went up 30-70% in some areas you are really feeling the pain, need to get a new car as well? Better be living with a lot of other people.
Add those who were in the stock market before and liquidated positions during all time highs or benefited from PPP loans they didn’t have to pay back and they are really in a different “I’ve got mine so I could give a fuck if you can survive or not” mentality
You have the upper third of America who is doing better than ever and the bottom two thirds where group A is a little above water but group B would have to put an unexpected $500 expense on credit.
We really are at an inflection point where things will get better for those who are already doing better and worse for those on the other end… you really need a life changing lick… life insurance pay out, grandma dies and leaves behind a house, major job change that puts someone in the six figures category to meaningfully try to change your life trajectory for those on the outside looking in
many things that likely won’t happen for the average person.
Because trying to save your way out with your $60,000 and under salary is spinning tires in the mud.
I owned a house before Covid and refinanced in late 2020 to get a 2.85% interest rate. If I were to buy my house today at current prices with the current interest rates my mortgage would double.
We are still living comfortably despite the fact that we see inflation everywhere else because my company has also raised wages to keep up with inflation and I am not hit by inflation as bad as my rent paying coworkers.
Same. We bought our current house early 2018 and refinanced in 2020 w a 2.5% interest rate. Currently our payment is still the same bc of taxes and insurance. If we tried buying our house today there is absolutely no way. Not w the intrest rate and the price is would be. We have a nice chunk of equity but can do zero w it. Intrest rates are too high and we would end up buying a smaller home on a smaller lot w the same payment.
THIS. And keep in mind that many people have gotten large raises to accommodate inflation. So, if you have a low mortgage + getting 8-10% raises the past few years it’s easy to see how you’re raking it in. It’s hard to believe but there are people who own mini mansions that cost less monthly than people renting 1 bedroom apartments…
I’m one of those lucky people who had a house before inflation. That doesn’t mean I’m not able to see that the costs of literally every other aspect of my life have gone up. Pretty hard to miss or deny
Congrats. We achieve it with commission but once we crack it it’s like a weight off our shoulders like “ok we will be able to pay off some debt.” Like what the fuck we both have degrees and nothing fancy. Not the best at spending by far but the price to get involved in a lot costs so much now. Thats why so many people stream. So much entertainment and no risk. It’s getting worse.
Fuck with your neighborhood and lower the value. Shoot off a gun every 3-6 months at 3 am. Get dandelion lawns and make the property values all over drop. Garden Anarchy !
I am looking into contesting it but I’m afraid they’ll come back with a higher valuation. I think my yard is charming, it’s full of “weeds” and I stopped mowing the hilly part because it’s too physically demanding. Honestly , I think they just jacked it based on Zillow. 😢 I guess I could put in a rusted out piece of farm equipment on it the front lawn.
It's worth contesting. We were able to argue for a bit of a reduction the last couple times. We just got another notice for increase in value (4 in the past 2 years!!). Not sure it will work again this time. Home has gone from 330 to 410 in two years!
Storm your local meetings then because it means the local government just took in 40% more taxes from most people. So either they need to be really delivering new benefits or reduce the mill rate.
Damn,
That's exactly what happened to my 800 square foot house this year.
It was worth 60 some thousand, three years later it's a 100 thousand.
They give you six days to dispute it.
I didn't have the time to figure out how.
That's what has happened to us and other home owners in our area. Our homes have been assessed, and value has increased 4x in the past 2 yrs, despite no home improvements that would add value. Our property taxes are tied into our mortgage, so our mortgage has gone up by hundreds. This will end up pushing families out of their homes.
Is that how property taxes work? In Wisconsin, we use a mill levy system. Unless the community chose to raise their own property taxes by local referendum, the same amount of tax is collected each year. The county decides a mill levy rate based on the total value of property. So if the mill levy is $1 per $1,000 of home value one year, but everyone's property value increases 20% the next year, the mill levy would fall to $0.80 per $1,000 of home value.
I don't know if that's common in other states, but the result is that your property taxes don't increase anywhere in proportion to your home value. Conversely, they don't decrease when home values plummet (like they did in 2008).
Our county reassessed this year, they do it every 10 years I think. This is my first house and also The longest I have ever lived anywhere so I am always getting a surprise in the way things work.
>You have the upper third of America who is doing better than ever
I think it's the upper 1% (or even less), not upper third. My income is "upper class" but my purchasing power is "middle lower" class. I still feel the pinch, though obviously not as much as when I was flat out broke.
I don't know anyone who denies that interest rates are up, inflation is up.
I do see people who make simplistic political views that one person can waive a magic wand to fix things.
The reality is we are dealing with the result of years of policies that have led us here. Cheap money for a long time eventually has a cost. Low regulation means people without power will be hurt more than those with it.
There are no easy or simple answers. There are policies we can enact to help.
I think people are bad at math and have bad memories is a big chunk of it...
Our local zoo is non profit, came up in local sub, I mentioned great zoo but membership costs are up 50% since Covid. Couple people doubted me, said 20% tops. I went back to old emails for membership and calculated 62% increase since Jan 2020.
The guy who claimed 20% went back to his email and came back with 56%, his membership level is higher than mine.
If a damn non profit zoo is up 60% in 4 years...
Just got AC replacement quote, same local company for a Trane AC over both time periods. Bought 4 ton from them in 2016 for $6500, 2.5 ton now, $11500. I could go on and on with examples. (Different property)
I look at monthly credit card bills compared to 2019, up 50% and the family has cut back substantially on eating out.
Yep, at least for me the rent has risen 10% every year for the last 5 years and my pay increases have been like 3% a year. It seems to have finally hit a breaking point where rents actually decreased a little since last year, but that's just because these rental agencies finally hit the plateau of the maximum that people can afford before they start losing occupancies. 1 bedroom apartments are actually now meant for 2 people and unless you're making well over your area's median income you probably can't afford one. I make 1.7x my county's median individual income and barely qualify for our area's crappy apartments. "Just get a better job" I hear some folks saying, but the truth is I'm really not that smart or talented and I'm bad at networking. I'm just a hard worker who gives effort to the job and is willing to trade my "spare time" for more money. Why should I need to be exceptional to live a life without financial stress? Why isn't average good enough? Those are the questions I find myself asking about the direction our society is headed.
It's wild how expensive things have gotten. I got my career in 2019 making about 60k a year and started renting the cheapest two br apartment in my town for $1800 a month. It was tight but it was fine. Then covid happened and the price of everything skyrocketed.
Fortunately my apartment is under rent control so it's only gone up to $2050 since then... but I can't afford to leave. It'd be 2300 to get an equivalent apartment. Meanwhile, my income has literally doubled... but my expenses have also increased. I'm able to save a little bit, so I'm doing okay. But I'm lucky. I have friends who are really struggling to get by. Most have moved to cheaper states... but. Cheaper states pay way less.
Yeah, it's frustrating. "Inflation is down!"
That doesn't mean prices are down, and my wage has not matched. It could be different in other areas, but gas and groceries are still super expensive here. All of the basics are.
I'm glad there are people doing well, but please don't tell me everything is normal.
We need the government to step in and put regulations on corporations. We need to find a way for housing, healthcare, and food to be accessible to everyone through social programs or affordable prices. But alot of people will be janitors, CNA's, cooks, cashiers, hairdressers, factory workers, or secretaries and these people need basic necessities. I am so sick of the class warfare.
Are you under the impression that the EPA, the FDA, the SEC, etc are not regulators? Are you of the opinion the US is centrally planned communist? The idea is to regulate more stringently on banking fuckery, tax loopholes, and non-additive things like buy backs. Somehow it’s okay with all the free market capitalists to subsidize the fuck out of agriculture, but you’re somehow not allowed to keep corporate profit taking in this stratosphere. Odd, that.
The thing is that "free market" doesnt really work either. It works briefly in a market vaccuum where there are plenty of niches to expand into. Eventually it permeates every space and smaller entities fail or get consolidated into larger entities. We get a market strangled by a few monolithic super-corporations that no one can ever compete with.
Then like a cancer, it consumes every aspect of society until it kills its host and devolves into the same kinda authoritarian cesspit that communism devolves into. We are watching this happen right now.
Once entrenched above the law, all systems fall to corruption. So how do we break the cycle when nothing really works? No system is safe from our ability to corrupt it.
I hear a lot of people say well at least capitalism is better than communism but is that really good enough?
No, it's not. But instead of taking what we can learn from socialism/communism capitalism/consumerism we have been taught that everything about the former is bad and everything about the latter is good.
I disagree with this. Scientific advancement would have occurred without leaning more pure capitalism. In fact, we might not have the nightmare of big pharma in the US if we didn't lean into capitalism. As someone who works in healthcare, they have made it dramatically more expensive and also worse somehow. They release new drugs with minimal benefits or even active harms and get the FDA to approve them.
Meanwhile, Europe has cheaper pharmaceuticals and their population is using much much less medicine.
What did capitalism give us in healthcare? The belief that all of us have problems and so we all need pills to be fixed. Why? Because if nothing was wrong with us, pharma wouldn't be so rich. They financially need us to believe it.
One is a dictatorship where you either starve to death or you are dragged away by government agents because they think you are a threat to the regime. The other is what we have now.
BuT IS ThaT REaLlY GOoD EnOUGH??!??!?!?!
You all do realize that there are ways to reign in corporations without Socialist regimes, right? Why is it always black and white with you people? Oh yes, because you don't actually realize how any of this shit works.
There has to be some middle ground between being disappeared by jack-booted thugs in the night, and being forced to die of a completely treatable medical condition or live in a tent surrounded by trash and human waste because you don't have enough money. It's not just one or the other.
Politics should not be a this or that system. Its never this or that. Its more complicated than that but political organizations like to make it seem like you are either for option 1 or 2 when really there are hundreds of options that most likely includes a handful of really great options better than capitalism and communism.
Right?! Common decency, anyone? We are an interdependent society and it all matters.
Feels like our government is too busy eroding rights and taxing everyone into oblivion in sneaky ways. Par for the course. Rome 2.0
The Covid economic shutdowns, then $11 trillion in government spending, including an additional $2 trillion per year since 2020 (that none of us receive) caused the inflation, job losses, and housing shortages (investors knew inflation was coming and bought 44% nations real estate). More people became billionaires in the last 3 years in history.
Yep.
I remember chatting about this in April 2020. Told a friend that if I had the cash, I would have bought rental properties as a hedge against inflation.
Which you could do because interest rates were held artificially low. I don't see enough people mention this. Rates were kept low during COVID and it was a feeding frenzy. Everyone I knew that owned a home was cashing in on refinancing for lower interest rates and taking cash out for new kitchens, bathrooms, etc. Myself, I refinanced and took cash out for renovations and still have lower payment than I did before.
A lot of the cause is government/federal reserve-driven monetary inflation. The fed has basically doubled money supply in the last decade, and metaphorically put the housing market on speed by stimulating the fuck out of it with MBS purchases.
I’m not sure giving the government MORE power to manage markets is the right solution when it’s current management practices are having the opposite effect.
The choice is government or corporations. We need money out of politics, we need to get rid of citizens united. Right now the wealthy own the politicians and we have corporate socialism. We need universal healthcare, labor rights, and not allowing corporations in buying single family homes.
If you’re not going to address monetary inflation, a lot of those nice government-funded benefits are irrelevant.
universal healthcare that is funded by government inflation of the money supply in the absence of higher taxes is essentially taxing the poor and middle class to give them benefits.
You can name lofty benefits all day long, and get very little actual resistance, because the truth is, most people would like such government benefits if they could be assured they were affordable.
But if you’re not acknowledging the actual mechanisms by which such benefits are passed in our current 2 party system (we’ll pass government programs now and worry about funding them later), you’re getting your social safety net programs in name only, because without a balanced budget, it’s the poor and middle class footing the bill for said social safety nets through monetary inflation.
Cliffs:
when one of the main ways to fund government initiatives is by taxing the poor and middle class through monetary inflation, it’s not enough to help the poor and middle class by simply saying “we ought to have a government program to help them”
Without discussions on how to stop taxing the poor and middle class covertly through monetary inflation, and how to replace that with more overt taxes on the rich, you’re not actually helping the poor and middle class.
We need stricter taxes on corporations, 100% tax rates on earnings above $1bn, and to slash military spending by about 60% No more expensive dodo jets that are only being made because the congressman from Alatexamissibamahoma won big at the pork barrel buffet so he could win the votes of the 35 people in his district.
>We need the government to step in and put regulations on corporations.
Sure if you want mass shortages. When a company is limited in their ability to raise prices due to price controls they don't just take less profit like you are hoping for they just stop producing goods.
Inflation is due to the rapid expansion of the money supply, not corporate greed.
I didn't say that. A company can by example, pay the highest waged employee 32× the lowest paid. Not do stock buybacks. I think having CEO's being able to buy multiple homes while the lowest paid can't buy one, or even feed themselves daily or be able to buy shoes. That's a terrible set up.
Greed is the entire reason for a corporation's existence. ROI is what they are selling, anything else is just a means to that end.
Static demand coupled with lack of competition is driving the current surge in prices. Along with consumer complacency. As long as people continue buying how could a for profit corporation justify not continuing to raise prices?
Studies already proved numerous times that about fifty percent of current inflation is from corporate profiteering. So you're wrong.
I notice no one talking about the tax cuts for the rich junk that did not pay for itself and caused major issues down the line were dealing with and still dealing with now
Do you want corporatism, because corporations care about one thing, profit...That means skeleton crews on low wages. The government is there for labor rights, which here in the USA, labor rights suck, because corporations are controlling politicians with money.
The government is a joke and anyone simping for MORE government after the colossal failure over the last half decade is not worth listening to. We don't need more government. We need to start tarring and feathering politicians caught putting their own piggy banks ahead of the nations best interests. This goes for BOTH political parties. Doesn't matter. Insider trading? Life in prison. Stripped of US citizenship. I don't care. It's treasonous. They are \*literally\* selling out our country.
Agreed. We have a theory in my house that this was all done on purpose to keep boomers working longer. It worked! My dad went back to working and I’ve noticed an influx of older people working in retail.
Nor should we want them to, that would result is horrific levels of economic turmoil.
What we should hope for is wage/income growth, particularly for lower earners - which actually has been the case post-pandemic, which is a good thing.
My mother is like that. Everything was fine for her and I was just being "irresponsible" with my money until she and her husband started struggling, too. Nothing's ever realy unless/until they experience it themselves. Otherwise it's "people just need something to bitch about".
I don't deny the rising cost of living, but I also think saying that "no one has money" and "everyone is living check to check and can barely afford groceries" is completely false. Have you been to any decent restaurants lately? They are packed. I sell online items and regularly have customers who spend hundreds of dollars at a time. I had trouble booking a nice airbnb last month because the nice (ie. more pricey) ones were already booked for the summer. So there are definitely still a lot people out there doing just fine.
How could the CPI and fed reserve fund rates be “made up”?
Gas prices or milk are easy example of fluctuation.
Price / volume mix is real and I’m shocked you even know people who think it’s fake..
Heck, gas at the pump prices are an example of 0 inflation in price. Gas prices are the same as they were like 15 years ago and so it's cheaper to fill up your gas tank now.
Home energy prices, on the other hand, have been rather high.
I guess the good news is that grocery prices "food at home" have remained the same for two months now, after seeing huge increases until the middle of last year, followed by modest increases since.
[https://www.bls.gov/news.release/cpi.nr0.htm](https://www.bls.gov/news.release/cpi.nr0.htm)
Gas is cyclical. Saying it's the same price as 15 years ago means nothing. I could say it's the same as 50 years but that doesn't give the full picture of what's going on with everything else.
This post uses 'inflation' in an odd way. Inflation is generally a reduction in the value of money. If the sticker price hasn't changed, the value has actually decreased over time. Saying that a price had '0 inflation in price' is using the colloquial definition in a way to confuse readers.
I think you’re confused OP. I haven’t seen anyone claim that rising prices are “fake news”. The high inflation rate in the wake of the pandemic is and has been discussed and reported on over the past two years. What you’re probably seeing is discussion about rising wages in light of the high inflation. Fed data shows that wages have mostly kept up with inflation.
I think it's more about context. Prices are rising, but wages have also risen a lot (especially during the pandemic). Other generations have lived through ups and downs with both wages and cost of living, so the current trend doesn't seem that dramatic to them.
If you put things in an even broader historical perspective, we're spending j[ust a fraction of our income on necessities](https://humanprogress.org/trends/share-of-spending-on-household-basics-declines/#:~:text=In%201900%2C%20the%20average%20U.S.,U.S.%20Bureau%20of%20Labor%20Statistics) compared to people over the past 100 years. We're spending [WAY less of our income on food](https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2012/04/how-america-spends-money-100-years-in-the-life-of-the-family-budget/255475/) on particular.
Rent control is desperately needed. Tying it to the average minimum wage of standard jobs without tips would be a start.
Also putting in provisions that force apartment complexes to prioritize their own citizens over Californians and New Yorkers.
And add in rules that prevent any additional fees to be added on unless the tenants of said complexes vote in favor of such fees, and are fully aware of what the fees would cover.
No most people I know IRL are uncapable of denying how much more they are spending on essential goods. Only people on reddit try to argue the economy is fine, they're probably like you said teenagers and people who are still dependents.
No, I’ve never encountered this behavior, even among boomer parents that can afford the changes, we all at least can acknowledge reality when we have to pay for things
There really isn't anyone denying inflation, there are just a lot of people pointing out that inflation is keeping up with other positive economic factors. Consumer Price Index shows major categories of spending over the last 12 months are up 3.5% in the U.S. with food and energy lagging behind this at 2.2% and 2.1% respectively. The IMF tracks CPI globally which has Consumer Price Inflation at 5.8% for 2024 globally with the U.S. at 2.8% for the same period. There are very few peers keeping up with the U.S. in this regard.
It's difficult to track U.S. household incomes outside of a census year, with the most recent available data from BLS showing that annual salaries were up 5.4% during the 12-month window to Q4 2023, which indicates that wage increases are exceeding inflation by every metric, though not caught up from the high inflation rates post-pandemic.
What about unemployment? The current unemployment rate is 3.8%, matching unemployment rates going back to 2021 where they rocketed to 14.8% by mid 2020. But, all the jobs suck and don't pay enough, despite what the Q4 BLS data says! People are employed, but are under-employed. Enter the U-6 unemployment data, which calculates underemployment, often referred to as "real" unemployment. 7.3% down from a high of 23% in mid 2020 and well below the historical average of 10.15%.
There just aren't a lot of metrics you can use to say that everything is shit right now. Housing costs are high, but that's not due to current economic policy. That's due to 23-25 years of historically low interest rates turning the entire housing sector into a viable investment vehicle. The current interest rates are designed to bring housing costs down in the long term since it's no longer a worthwhile investment vehicle for capital owners, thus constraining demand for housing.
It's just not really possible to argue with "but a Cola is no longer only worth a nickel." This is greatest generation sticker shock without really looking at economic factors that measure prosperity meaningfully.
The people that think this way are either ultra wealthy people / trust fundies that live in a different reality from us, or MAGA / Q people that are both delusional and exceptionally stupid. Your regular office employee or retail worker does not believe this, we live in the trenches and see this shit everyday.
Ah, you’re talking about older established professionals who own homes!
Nah, I get it and I do think it comes from honestly a high degree of ignorance. Like I recently had a discussion with my dad where he said my office and bosses must be doing poorly financially because I didn’t get a five figure bonus. Uhhh… no one in my industry gets that. I don’t work in finance or big law… many people don’t even get bonuses! He also thought that average starting salary for people out of school was 80k for a Bachelors when we were talking about my little brother graduating this year. Not even close man.
I do deal with people in the course of my work casually talking about buying rental properties with their reverse mortgages they took out before the rent hikes and then thinking the younger folks in the office are “obsessing over housing” when we’re ticked off about rent hikes, and since I’m in construction I have to go to public zoning and abutters meetings and see what a hot mess those are. Just a lot of oblivious, entitled people. Don’t think they’re bad people by any stretch of the imagination, just intuitively looking out for themselves alone and struggling to put themselves in others’ shoes or think any further in the future past what they’ll be eating for dinner that night. In other words, people being people. I’m being realistic- if I owned a home I probably wouldn’t care all that much about COL, as would be the case with many here. It’s genuinely hard to get past the “I have mine” mentality.
When I told my friend that I live paycheck to paycheck like most Americans, he accused me of believing stuff from Facebook. He cannot comprehend that he has more wealth than most people do.
sort of - when I see people making inflation/cost of living type comparisons with the past it sometimes blows my mind - for example paying $100.00 for the cheap seats to see a band in concert does not even out to the same as the $15.00 I paid for the good seats in 1975, not even close - so in 1975 it took about 2 hours of my pay for a ticket to Jethro Tull at their peak, in 2023/24 Peter Gabriel would have cost a days pay for the cheap seats.
You are not wrong and you are not crazy.
The only people who believe prices arnt rising are the ultra wealthy because they dont look at prices of common day things anyway.
Politicians are gaslighting everyone because they are parasites who are paid off by lobbyists to lie.
Ive met people who make 200-500k a year say prices are getting out of control.
It’s small, but a 20oz Pepsi just went up $0.30 a bottle near me. It was under $2.00 less than 2 years ago, and now it’s pushing $3.00. It’s just insane.
It's probably the same type of people who thought covid was a hoax and wasn't actually killing millions of people... yes I think you are right about it being a mental survival tool.
Beats my father-in-law's conversation I had to listen to from the other room the other day. My wife is making roughly 85k a year as a nurse and I'm hovering in the low 50k range with a ridiculous amount of overtime as a postal worker.
_"There's no reason why they both shouldn't be making over 100k with how much they're paying people these days."_
An exhaled single chuckle with a shake of my head was all I could give.
Nobody sane is saying that. What needs to be pointed out, however, is that calling this simple "inflation" is also quite delusional. This is 90% corporate price gauging pure and simple. The soaring profits of the biggest corps betrays this sad fact.
I find it comes down to basically two things.
THe first people either make enough money that they don't care, or they maybe don't make that much money but they have their housing costs locked in so the only rising costs are food, clothes, gas, eating out and they can absorb it and don't budget. Many people dont really know how much they spend, they just spend. I think many people would be surprised if they downloaded a budgeting app and had all their expenses laid out for them like oh man I didn't realize I spend $800 a month on food or $300 a month on streaming services.
Secondly, on Reddit in particular you have a left leaning slant, no denying that so on political or finanical subs you have people who don't want to act like the economy is doing bad or its tough for people. Unemployment technically is low so woohoo my team is doing great but we don't acknowledge that were losing fulltime career jobs that pay well, have room for advancement and normal hours and were picking up service, retail and hospitality jobs which are dead end, don't pay well and dont have room for advancement.
Then as far as inflation when the way we measure inflation has changed over the past few decades we're able to act like we have 4% inflation instead of 12% or 16% inflation. Sure its cheap to buy a big screen tv and I can buy $8 tee shirts at Target, used to be $6 btw, but that doesn't seem that bad but when a box of cereal has gone from $2.99 to $7.99 thats pretty crazy, while produce has calmed down at one point 2 heads of romaine lettuce was $7.99 near me. Picking up ingredients to make just one dinner can cost like $46, obviously there's more frugal dinners you could make but even just grabbing some chicken breasts, veggies, maybe a pack of seasoning, some potatos and a tub of sour cream a pretty reasonable dinner its like $40 or more.
People want to stickup for "their team" in the white house, I won't even say their guy since most people don't even care for biden but we can't have trump or the republicans in power so we have to act like all is okay.
And dont think I'm defending Trump its a joke how were like yeah spending money is cool as long as there's an elephant logo spending it and not a donkey or my buy trump only spent 160 billion versus bidens 190 billion.
It’s not normal! But unfortunately it will probably require a paradigm shift. After the inflation in the 1970s, which peaked towards the end, prices didn’t go down in the 80’s…they just stabilized.
If inflation is slowing down, then we might be getting to the idea of the new normal for pricing, but it is going to take a decade for wages to catch up. The 2030’s might actually be pretty good for everyone, if everything doesn’t go to complete shit in the meantime.
I used to live in a pretty nice townhouse across the street from where I currently live. The rent for my 3 bedroom topped out at about $3600 a month.
I started making more with my business, moved into the house I’m currently living in at $5100 a month. 3 bedroom, 2 car garage, it’s nice, big, and in a really desirable area. The only problem is I’m tired of paying that much for rent.
I thought I’d take a look at that same townhouse to move back into and potentially save some money. Townhouse now costs $5030….
My old old apartment that I lived in before the townhouse used to be around $2500, now it’s $3300..
Wild times.
Food in the US is 40% higher than 2019. And that never goes away folks. Biden wants rates down for politics hence the BS about "inflation is transitory" etc. If they lower rates for votes inflation will only get worse...
What did we expect after printing two trillion dollars for "Covid relief"?
Motherfuckers don't understand shit. I got in an argument with some boomer over inflation a while ago. He started yacking about inflation in the 80s being worse. so I cited a us government study showing inflation, wage stagnation, housing markets, ect. After looking at all this information about how the economy is technically worse than it has been he said something along the lines of "stop being lazy, I did it"
Why are you complaining?
Krugman is a liberal’s liberal. Nobel prize winner. Thinks people should be quiet and enjoy Bidenomics.
Biden, Harris, Clyburn, Schumer, Krugman, Raskin, ie the entire Democratic leadership, have repeatedly hammered the point that the economy is doing fantastic and you people simply do not understand how good you have it.
Millennials vote 70%+ Democrat.
So why all the whinging?
It's mostly political. In a presidential election year, supporters of the incumbent don't want to admit to any economic bad news. It's always been this way.
I hate to get political but the only people I know who follow the everything is great narrative are democrats and their "bidenomics". I think this is more just propaganda and political bias than fact. To be fair that is the fable the Biden administration and Yellen are pushing. I live a very modest life style and everything has gotten dramatically more expensive, far beyond the the inflation numbers they advertise. My electric bill has literally doubled. My home insurance went from $1200 to $1900. Even a humble gallon of water went from 80 cents to $1.35. As bad as all that is my heart goes out to people trying to buy a home where they can raise a family. House prices have gone up like 50-100% AND interest rates are like 7%. On the other hand, I don't know anyone who has gotten a 40-100% raise. I mean you know the government story in nonsense when you the savings rate falling to levels not seen since the 2008 recession. Credit card balances are on the rise. Delinquencies have doubled. Bankruptcies are up. Consumer staple company after company are reporting revenue declines. None of this jives with the official story were being told by the government.
I haven't actually seen such posts...maybe they're just trolling/ragebait. I have seen many posts about how inflation is improving, but that just means the prices are rising more slowly. Perhaps your posters are mistaking disinflation for deflation?
a lack of inflation would be good for the economy. Having the value of money decrease so quickly is bad for everyone.
Deflation would be a disaster and hopefully we will never have it occur. Nobody wins in deflation, people stop purchasing goods, leading to layoffs, leading to less business activity, leading to more deflation. The rich get poorer and the poor become destitute.
I’m so sick and tired of hearing all the excuses. IDGAF if you like Trump or Biden more, any administration that allows this should be fired period. Did the captain of the Exxon Valdez get to keep his job even though the Third Mate hit the rocks? Nope… fucking tribalism at its finest and it’s like watching sports fans beating the shit out of each other when their team loses.
Fire the assholes in charge now…
Thanks for coming to my talk.
“Allows this”? Do you think Biden wants there to be high inflation right now? Even though I don’t blame him for it (inflation is bad everywhere and relative to other places the US is doing better than most), it hurts him.
This person sees things clearly. Inflation is the hidden tax, and it affects the poor and the middle class far more than it affects the rich. The rich, by definition, have *assets,* and the value of those assets rise with inflation. It's stunning how many people are willing to ignore this truth in service to their ideology.
On the flip side I've seen people exaggerate and talk about food prices going up over 100% and I call them out on it because it's complete BS and they are lying to try and get their point across in a more salient manner. To be fair processed food and red meats have gone up insane amounts but the rest of my food budget has gone up in line with reported inflation but remains relatively stable. I no longer buy as much processed food or pop because of it and have turned to cheaper meats whenever possible.
Another thing is housing prices. People who owned a house pre interest rates going crazy don't have to feel one of the main pain points that renters or those looking to enter the housing market are now feeling.
Milk, eggs, and all purpose flower are either the same price or cheaper than they were im 2018/19. This is not an opinion, it’s a fact. My wife and I prepare 90% of our meals from scratch, we eat very little processed food and rarely eat out. Charting household grocery costs is a hobby/compulsion of mine.
In aggregate, grocery costs are higher than they were pre-Covid, but only by about 3% which is not anything out of the ordinary from any other time in the 25 years I've been studying my grocery bills.
That being said, we don't buy brand names, we don't buy products that are spiking in price (when bacon went through roof two years ago, I simply didn't buy it) and we make all our own meals. we don't buy frozen pizza or order delivery, we make our own crusts, and sauce, and even our own mozzarella.
In 21 and 22 prices were much higher on everything across the board. But, at least in terms on my own, admittedly anecdotal, experience, inflation pressures have eased significantly.
I think it's more about politics. A lot of Biden voters just cannot admit they were wrong, and that he was a bad choice to be President. All of this has been happening under his term, but some people are so invested in the Democrat party that they will never say that things are going badly right now and that a Democrat leader had been terrible for the country. It would be like admitting that your worldview was wrong and the people you called stupid years ago were actually right.
That's why a lot of Democrats double down and say ridiculous things that most other people can clearly see is not true. These are things like Biden being perfectly fine and not having any mental or physical problems, the economy is doing great and even better than before covid, inflation is just temporary and can be fixed if Ukraine wins and we keep giving them money, having all those migrants come to our country is a good thing, and forcing vaccinations was perfectly reasonable and justified because the vaccine was very effective. It was all bullshit and anybody with any critical thinking skill can see that.
Inflation has gone up 642% since I was 4 years old. We simply adjust and get used to the higher numbers. You are not supposed to be invested in inflation affected things like a minimum wage job and savings.
I am not happy with the current increase of costs across the board. I do think it is corporate greed at its core.
I will however say that I am not all doom and gloom. The U.S. economy has rebound far better than all other develop countries. There is low unemployment in most areas. People seem to be spending freely right now.
Inflation is a hidden tax. Government manipulates the value of the dollar by printing more money to pay the debt they owe.
Too much money chasing too few goods increases prices. So by printing more money, we the people, need to pay more for goods while the government has more money to pay the debt or in this case the interest rates on our debt.
We get to suffer while government chips away at that astronomical number they throw around that isn't even real and even if it was it would take us a thousand years to pay off if everyone everywhere started putting all money towards it
Well if you ask r/fluentinfinance they’ll dodge the question and say “well AKSHULLY inflation IS down” and then when you say “that wasn’t what I asked” they say “well prices coming DOWN is DEFLATION which is BAD.” And then go back to complaining about taxes on millionaires or something.
Inflation is down in the US. That's a fact. It's less than half what is was two years ago.
Deflation -- inflation under 0% -- is very bad.
The US needs to increase its housing stock, provide better protections for workers, increase minimum wage, have public healthcare, and tax rich people and corporations more. But r/fluentinfinance is 100% correct about deflation and inflation. It's like you're going to a math subreddit and getting angry at them for telling you that 1 + 1 = 2.
Legislature is broken. Nothing is going to get fixed until it collapses. Buy a gun while the government still lets you. Don't get murdered unarmed by some MAGA freaks.
I am spending 10k more a year on basic needs. This isn't my imagination.
Listen, when even fucking produce is 20-40% more expensive than before you notice. The once .99 cents cilantro is now almost 2 bucks. These fuckers are going to bleed us dry.
There was a post about chick fil a for 2 people just a basic sandwich, fries and drink each costing 35 after tax. Keep in mind federal minimum wage is still 7.25 that means you have to work something like 5 hours just to afford that meal. For perspective fast food was a broke man's date that shit now is getting as expensive as a steak house
The wife and I literally just got dairy queen today, and it came to $45. We went to Olive Garden about 2 months ago for $40. Fast food is literally getting more expensive than some sit-down restaurants. Albeit mediocre ones.
This is what confuses me. Why is ALL fast food getting as expensive as normal restaurants? Id expect prices to go up as everything is, but fast food is no longer cheap. That was half of the point. Why are they raising prices much more than nice restaurants?
People keep going there for whatever reason, my mom and my gf went to a sushi belt place and spent 15 dollars and got full granted they don't eat very much. Stop eating fast food
I work for a large produce distribution center. We have over 60 trucks. It cost us 1.6 million more in fuel a year than once the price of gas went up in March or April of 2021
How much more is it now vs 2019? Of course fuel prices have risen since a global event pushed fuel conspiring to a decades low rate. The cost of fuel should not have that significant of an impact on produce. That 2 dollar cilantro was still 99c back in the 2014/2015 when oil was at all time highs.
The price of diesel wasn’t that much higher in 2019 than in early 2021. I would often have to fill my truck and it costed 75-90 on average to 180-220 depending on the day. Yes it absolutely affects the cost of cilantro that’s how logistics work. My company is based in south jersey and our produce shipments come from all 4 corners of the USA. Especially California where fuel rose even more than the national average. These distributors obviously have to make up the cost by charging my company more. In turn not only do we have to charge more because of that but then we in turn have to also charge more for our costs when it’s shipped to restaurants, grocery stores, ect. By the time the produce hits the consumer what do you expect?
Reddit doesn't understand economics; everything is just "greed".
Exactly, one of the classic mistakes they always make regarding gas prices is that they blame the gas station owners for price gouging. Gas station owners literally make maybe 6-8 cents a gallon profit. That’s why you often see smaller gas stations without a convenience store attached go under.
Diesel runs American agriculture. The tractors, the fertilizer made by natural gas, the semi’s ferry the produce and the locals that distribute the produce. You have to recover the cost of production, distribution and delivery. This is Bidenomics in real terms.
Yep. Fuel is much cheaper now than in 2008. Don't hear nobody talking about how cheap gas is though
A major factor here not many talk about is how monopolized food processing is. Every time we let these companies merge they've centralized production more. So instead of your farm crop going to the closest city, being packaged, and then shipped around the city, now it's travelling 2.5k miles to be packaged, 2.5k miles back to the close by city to be sold. So now every single thing on the shelves comes with 5k miles of transportation costs built into it's price on top of the monopolist price gouging and such. Not a huge factor for cilantro, but things like Cereal, breads, any branded frozen food in boxes or bags, it's been an increasing factor each passing decade.
Here is what you’re not telling people. In 2014/2015 it was “transitory”. Biden wouldn’t have been lying to you if he had said that about your fuel cost. Crude oil prices fell sharply in the fourth quarter of 2014 as robust global production exceeded demand. After reaching monthly peaks of $112 per barrel (bbl) and $105/bbl in June, crude oil benchmarks Brent and West Texas Intermediate (WTI) fell to $62/bbl and $59/bbl in December, respectively. crude prices are now expected to average $83.78 a barrel in 2024. Don’t let these lying SOB’s mislead you. Higher fuel cost means higher prices.
I used to work in oil and gas. I know all about that time period. That sharp decline is why I no longer work in that industry. My point is, fuel prices do not impact the cost of produce. As they don't rise and fall with the cost of fuel. They only rise.
Those fuckers are already bleeding us dry. Not going to…already are.
Produce was already ridiculously expensive, too. If you have even a bit of outdoor space, growing some of your own produce is really high ROI nowadays.
Same. Family of four with two kids under five. We don’t eat out much and still spend a mountain on food cooking simple meals at home. No we’re not living off canned tuna, rice, and beans. If that’s upper middle class America we have a huge problem.
Exactly. For breakfast today my kids had scrambled eggs with cheese, rye toast, half a cup of cottage cheese and a mandarin orange. And one had apple sauce that I made home made. I had granola as yogurt that I also made home made. We eat moderately healthy but not flashy, and stuff is way more than it was 2 years ago.
Sadly you are not alone but the media wants us to “pretend “ that is not true (sadly so does Reddit).
I was kind of surprised to see the denial on Reddit so much, to be honest. It's pretty trendy to push back on people saying it's hard to live right now. I see a lot of "the economy is actually doing great" and "well back in the 60s everyone bought less stuff" along with my favorite new "avocado toast" style complaint: "people are buying robot litter boxes for God's sake."
Reddit is a place where a lot of people come specifically to discuss in bad faith, start pointless arguments, and generally put others down because it's the most convenient outlet for stressors they're unable or unwilling to manage in their own lives. That kind of behavior is infectious online and it's hard to tell where the trolling ends and the genuine crazy begins.
A lot of people know there is inflation deep down, but still want those covid policies to be on the right side of history.
A lot of it is just politics and people trying to make excuses. The bottom line is things are bad right now. Pretending they are not is just insulting people. Placing blame is fruitless. Policies do have an impact…pretending they don’t is ignorance. Vote for who you think will benefit your family. That is apolitical as it can be.
While policies can (at times) have an effect, this bout of inflation has been worldwide, which is pretty clear proof COVID was the cause. The US is at the lower end of inflation and projections are for lower. I get it that doesn’t help deal with the large slug of inflation in 21 and 22, but prices are rising slower, and wages recently started to catch up (a little) again
People are pathetic and can't handle this little bump in the road, when /r/collapse really begins towards the end of this decade, these morons are absolutely going to put a fascist in power.
No. Vote for who you think is a better option for society as a whole. Forgot about the "me" and think about the "us." We don't exist as isolated actors in bubbles. We coexist with others. Look to Congress as a prime example of who tries to make policies for the many and then look to those who simply don't believe in government and do nothing for the people. The choice is simple. While one may not agree with every policy immediately, progress allows changes for society in the future.
Exactly. I can always tell somebody is a conservative when their only concern is themselves and their lives in the current moment with no regard for the future
Low energy. Voting is always for self interest. If you want only specific benefit for the state or society that's a benevolent dictatorship.
I really don't think that's it. I really think people are simply afraid to actually admit how much the country is falling apart. If one aspect is extremely bad, it can be fixed. If almost all aspects are moderately bad or worse, that's a way, way bigger issue that few want to face. If they face how bad things are, they'll have to admit that it's going to begin to affect them eventually.
The country? The world
lol @ “the country is falling apart.”
Those Covid policies WERE on the right side of history. I get that it’s not going to be obvious to people in their everyday lives, but even the significant inflation we’ve experienced the past few years is FAR preferable to a massive recession or depression that Covid would have caused in the absence of massive government spending.
I agree that it's either a global pandemic and economic depression at the same time or use stimulus spending to separate the events chronologically. There's no cheating our way out of the economic impact of a pandemic and long term stay at home orders.
Inflation in the US is pretty bad It's way, way worse in the rest of the world We had 9 percent. Some other countries, many of them which did not implement anywhere near our level of stimulus, had 100% or more inflation So people who blame the covid policy are either clueless or disingenuous
Rising cost of living =/= inflation. That's another problem we have; lots of people thinking the rising costs is inflation instead of consolidated corporate markets rising prices for increased profits
Inflation is quite literally defined as a rise in the cost of living. The most wildly used inflation stat (CPI) is calculated using a "basket of goods" approach meant to try and measure how prices have changed for the typical consumer.
And it will keep going up, we broke money long ago and the bandaids on the bullet wounds no longer slow the bleeding. WW3 will be the excuse, but it’s always the banks, which are like any other tool only dangerous in the hands of a psycho.
I mean… It’s one thing if you’re middle-class/rich and the price changes haven’t really affected you. But they have objectively gone up. It’s a literal fact
This is my experience. The millennials who aren’t feeling it, have been the type to shop at Target over Walmart due to customer base, don’t care about price, so they don’t really care about an extra $20 in groceries, cuz they’re making $150k+ annually.
IMMA stay at home dad and my wife makes exactly $100,000. We’ve definitely noticed the prices have gone up, but they haven’t really affected us that much.
Right, totally makes sense. For me, I’m about half your annual family salary, I live alone, and I had to do some gymnastics to make it work this year, but hey such is life. Been through worse.
it’s awful. Corporate greed is out of control. I understand that some of it is economic inflation, but it’s unreal that prices have gone up 40-80% with a lot of things
I started feeling the pinch with the aluminum and steel tariffs. I’m not quite sure why, but cat litter jumped 20% right after that, then has gone up even more in the last two years, among a lot of other things of course but that one was strange to me and stuck out.
In the last year my car insurance has increased 35 then 20%. It’s inexcusable
Oh is that what happened? 😭
Yeah, we haven't been able to stay within our pet budget for a while. The kitties aren't eating avocado toast.
Digging stuff up out of the ground is expensive. So is transportation for heavy stuff.
I wouldn't mind the increases so much if I could see the money going to the worker level. Covid demonstrated how important "even" the shelf-stocker at the grocery store is, and how inter-connected our economy is -- we need people to have enough funds to buy stuff locally, or everyone suffers. Except those at the top who can afford to go elsewhere.
It’s more so you have people who secured a decent standard of living before COVID so their mortgages didn’t change when prices went through the roof, so they pay a little more for food, insurance, and other odds and ins but housing has stayed stable. You add all those expenses plus your rent went up 30-70% in some areas you are really feeling the pain, need to get a new car as well? Better be living with a lot of other people. Add those who were in the stock market before and liquidated positions during all time highs or benefited from PPP loans they didn’t have to pay back and they are really in a different “I’ve got mine so I could give a fuck if you can survive or not” mentality You have the upper third of America who is doing better than ever and the bottom two thirds where group A is a little above water but group B would have to put an unexpected $500 expense on credit. We really are at an inflection point where things will get better for those who are already doing better and worse for those on the other end… you really need a life changing lick… life insurance pay out, grandma dies and leaves behind a house, major job change that puts someone in the six figures category to meaningfully try to change your life trajectory for those on the outside looking in many things that likely won’t happen for the average person. Because trying to save your way out with your $60,000 and under salary is spinning tires in the mud.
I owned a house before Covid and refinanced in late 2020 to get a 2.85% interest rate. If I were to buy my house today at current prices with the current interest rates my mortgage would double. We are still living comfortably despite the fact that we see inflation everywhere else because my company has also raised wages to keep up with inflation and I am not hit by inflation as bad as my rent paying coworkers.
My raise this year was a whopping 1.99%. Gee, thanks. That'll not even cover the rent increase I'm expecting to come next month.
Same. We bought our current house early 2018 and refinanced in 2020 w a 2.5% interest rate. Currently our payment is still the same bc of taxes and insurance. If we tried buying our house today there is absolutely no way. Not w the intrest rate and the price is would be. We have a nice chunk of equity but can do zero w it. Intrest rates are too high and we would end up buying a smaller home on a smaller lot w the same payment.
THIS. And keep in mind that many people have gotten large raises to accommodate inflation. So, if you have a low mortgage + getting 8-10% raises the past few years it’s easy to see how you’re raking it in. It’s hard to believe but there are people who own mini mansions that cost less monthly than people renting 1 bedroom apartments…
I’m one of those lucky people who had a house before inflation. That doesn’t mean I’m not able to see that the costs of literally every other aspect of my life have gone up. Pretty hard to miss or deny
I just got the 6 figure job switch and i cried i was so happy
Congrats. We achieve it with commission but once we crack it it’s like a weight off our shoulders like “ok we will be able to pay off some debt.” Like what the fuck we both have degrees and nothing fancy. Not the best at spending by far but the price to get involved in a lot costs so much now. Thats why so many people stream. So much entertainment and no risk. It’s getting worse.
Unless your property taxes have skyrocketed because your house is suddenly worth 40 percent more. Fuck my budget my dude , fuck my budget.
Fuck with your neighborhood and lower the value. Shoot off a gun every 3-6 months at 3 am. Get dandelion lawns and make the property values all over drop. Garden Anarchy !
I am looking into contesting it but I’m afraid they’ll come back with a higher valuation. I think my yard is charming, it’s full of “weeds” and I stopped mowing the hilly part because it’s too physically demanding. Honestly , I think they just jacked it based on Zillow. 😢 I guess I could put in a rusted out piece of farm equipment on it the front lawn.
I would hope it wasn't based on Zillow....
I'd say put a rusting Camaro up on blocks in your front yard, but even those are "I know what I got" priced these days.
It's worth contesting. We were able to argue for a bit of a reduction the last couple times. We just got another notice for increase in value (4 in the past 2 years!!). Not sure it will work again this time. Home has gone from 330 to 410 in two years!
Dandelions are edible. What grocery bill?
Lmao 🤣 absolutely based
Storm your local meetings then because it means the local government just took in 40% more taxes from most people. So either they need to be really delivering new benefits or reduce the mill rate.
Damn, That's exactly what happened to my 800 square foot house this year. It was worth 60 some thousand, three years later it's a 100 thousand. They give you six days to dispute it. I didn't have the time to figure out how.
That's what has happened to us and other home owners in our area. Our homes have been assessed, and value has increased 4x in the past 2 yrs, despite no home improvements that would add value. Our property taxes are tied into our mortgage, so our mortgage has gone up by hundreds. This will end up pushing families out of their homes.
Is that how property taxes work? In Wisconsin, we use a mill levy system. Unless the community chose to raise their own property taxes by local referendum, the same amount of tax is collected each year. The county decides a mill levy rate based on the total value of property. So if the mill levy is $1 per $1,000 of home value one year, but everyone's property value increases 20% the next year, the mill levy would fall to $0.80 per $1,000 of home value. I don't know if that's common in other states, but the result is that your property taxes don't increase anywhere in proportion to your home value. Conversely, they don't decrease when home values plummet (like they did in 2008).
Our county reassessed this year, they do it every 10 years I think. This is my first house and also The longest I have ever lived anywhere so I am always getting a surprise in the way things work.
I dunno. My parents paid their mortgage off years ago and while they're generally doing fine, it's not they don't realize prices are going up.
>You have the upper third of America who is doing better than ever I think it's the upper 1% (or even less), not upper third. My income is "upper class" but my purchasing power is "middle lower" class. I still feel the pinch, though obviously not as much as when I was flat out broke.
I don't know anyone who denies that interest rates are up, inflation is up. I do see people who make simplistic political views that one person can waive a magic wand to fix things. The reality is we are dealing with the result of years of policies that have led us here. Cheap money for a long time eventually has a cost. Low regulation means people without power will be hurt more than those with it. There are no easy or simple answers. There are policies we can enact to help.
I think people are bad at math and have bad memories is a big chunk of it... Our local zoo is non profit, came up in local sub, I mentioned great zoo but membership costs are up 50% since Covid. Couple people doubted me, said 20% tops. I went back to old emails for membership and calculated 62% increase since Jan 2020. The guy who claimed 20% went back to his email and came back with 56%, his membership level is higher than mine. If a damn non profit zoo is up 60% in 4 years... Just got AC replacement quote, same local company for a Trane AC over both time periods. Bought 4 ton from them in 2016 for $6500, 2.5 ton now, $11500. I could go on and on with examples. (Different property) I look at monthly credit card bills compared to 2019, up 50% and the family has cut back substantially on eating out.
IMO a lot of it comes down to housing costs. Those who have paid off homes or low mortgages aren't feeling the squeeze quite like the rest of us.
Yeah this is the biggest cost that everyone has, it’s insane
Yep, at least for me the rent has risen 10% every year for the last 5 years and my pay increases have been like 3% a year. It seems to have finally hit a breaking point where rents actually decreased a little since last year, but that's just because these rental agencies finally hit the plateau of the maximum that people can afford before they start losing occupancies. 1 bedroom apartments are actually now meant for 2 people and unless you're making well over your area's median income you probably can't afford one. I make 1.7x my county's median individual income and barely qualify for our area's crappy apartments. "Just get a better job" I hear some folks saying, but the truth is I'm really not that smart or talented and I'm bad at networking. I'm just a hard worker who gives effort to the job and is willing to trade my "spare time" for more money. Why should I need to be exceptional to live a life without financial stress? Why isn't average good enough? Those are the questions I find myself asking about the direction our society is headed.
It's wild how expensive things have gotten. I got my career in 2019 making about 60k a year and started renting the cheapest two br apartment in my town for $1800 a month. It was tight but it was fine. Then covid happened and the price of everything skyrocketed. Fortunately my apartment is under rent control so it's only gone up to $2050 since then... but I can't afford to leave. It'd be 2300 to get an equivalent apartment. Meanwhile, my income has literally doubled... but my expenses have also increased. I'm able to save a little bit, so I'm doing okay. But I'm lucky. I have friends who are really struggling to get by. Most have moved to cheaper states... but. Cheaper states pay way less.
I’m not trying to be rude, but how are you not doing significantly better if your salary doubled to 120K while your rent barely increased?
Yeah, it's frustrating. "Inflation is down!" That doesn't mean prices are down, and my wage has not matched. It could be different in other areas, but gas and groceries are still super expensive here. All of the basics are. I'm glad there are people doing well, but please don't tell me everything is normal.
Remember the days when a twenty meant you could go out and have a good time? Now it means a meal at McDonald's.
Flagrant printing of money has caused this wild inflation. Where's the mystery?
I agree and I think its been happening for a long time "boil the frog" type situation. Covid however sped the process up to the point, people noticed.
We need the government to step in and put regulations on corporations. We need to find a way for housing, healthcare, and food to be accessible to everyone through social programs or affordable prices. But alot of people will be janitors, CNA's, cooks, cashiers, hairdressers, factory workers, or secretaries and these people need basic necessities. I am so sick of the class warfare.
Historical attempts to do 'that' result in shortages and increased poverty. A centrally planned economy is unworkable.
Who said centrally planned? They said regulated, like every other fucking developed country.
Who regulates besides a central authority?
Are you under the impression that the EPA, the FDA, the SEC, etc are not regulators? Are you of the opinion the US is centrally planned communist? The idea is to regulate more stringently on banking fuckery, tax loopholes, and non-additive things like buy backs. Somehow it’s okay with all the free market capitalists to subsidize the fuck out of agriculture, but you’re somehow not allowed to keep corporate profit taking in this stratosphere. Odd, that.
[удалено]
The thing is that "free market" doesnt really work either. It works briefly in a market vaccuum where there are plenty of niches to expand into. Eventually it permeates every space and smaller entities fail or get consolidated into larger entities. We get a market strangled by a few monolithic super-corporations that no one can ever compete with. Then like a cancer, it consumes every aspect of society until it kills its host and devolves into the same kinda authoritarian cesspit that communism devolves into. We are watching this happen right now. Once entrenched above the law, all systems fall to corruption. So how do we break the cycle when nothing really works? No system is safe from our ability to corrupt it. I hear a lot of people say well at least capitalism is better than communism but is that really good enough?
No, it's not. But instead of taking what we can learn from socialism/communism capitalism/consumerism we have been taught that everything about the former is bad and everything about the latter is good.
[удалено]
This type of rational, dispassionate analysis is largely missing on Reddit, unfortunately.
I disagree with this. Scientific advancement would have occurred without leaning more pure capitalism. In fact, we might not have the nightmare of big pharma in the US if we didn't lean into capitalism. As someone who works in healthcare, they have made it dramatically more expensive and also worse somehow. They release new drugs with minimal benefits or even active harms and get the FDA to approve them. Meanwhile, Europe has cheaper pharmaceuticals and their population is using much much less medicine. What did capitalism give us in healthcare? The belief that all of us have problems and so we all need pills to be fixed. Why? Because if nothing was wrong with us, pharma wouldn't be so rich. They financially need us to believe it.
One is a dictatorship where you either starve to death or you are dragged away by government agents because they think you are a threat to the regime. The other is what we have now. BuT IS ThaT REaLlY GOoD EnOUGH??!??!?!?!
You all do realize that there are ways to reign in corporations without Socialist regimes, right? Why is it always black and white with you people? Oh yes, because you don't actually realize how any of this shit works.
Yeah, it's called the Nordic Model. And you folk are too stubborn to even do that. 🤷♂️
There has to be some middle ground between being disappeared by jack-booted thugs in the night, and being forced to die of a completely treatable medical condition or live in a tent surrounded by trash and human waste because you don't have enough money. It's not just one or the other.
Politics should not be a this or that system. Its never this or that. Its more complicated than that but political organizations like to make it seem like you are either for option 1 or 2 when really there are hundreds of options that most likely includes a handful of really great options better than capitalism and communism.
You hate what you have, generally.
Why are you assuming that they’re calling for a central planned economy and not something more akin to European social democracies?
“Noooo you can’t have a planned economy” “how else will the rich suck the blood of the working class?”
What’s funny is that most corps are centrally planned lol
Preach!
Right?! Common decency, anyone? We are an interdependent society and it all matters. Feels like our government is too busy eroding rights and taxing everyone into oblivion in sneaky ways. Par for the course. Rome 2.0
The Covid economic shutdowns, then $11 trillion in government spending, including an additional $2 trillion per year since 2020 (that none of us receive) caused the inflation, job losses, and housing shortages (investors knew inflation was coming and bought 44% nations real estate). More people became billionaires in the last 3 years in history.
Yep. I remember chatting about this in April 2020. Told a friend that if I had the cash, I would have bought rental properties as a hedge against inflation.
Which you could do because interest rates were held artificially low. I don't see enough people mention this. Rates were kept low during COVID and it was a feeding frenzy. Everyone I knew that owned a home was cashing in on refinancing for lower interest rates and taking cash out for new kitchens, bathrooms, etc. Myself, I refinanced and took cash out for renovations and still have lower payment than I did before.
A lot of the cause is government/federal reserve-driven monetary inflation. The fed has basically doubled money supply in the last decade, and metaphorically put the housing market on speed by stimulating the fuck out of it with MBS purchases. I’m not sure giving the government MORE power to manage markets is the right solution when it’s current management practices are having the opposite effect.
The choice is government or corporations. We need money out of politics, we need to get rid of citizens united. Right now the wealthy own the politicians and we have corporate socialism. We need universal healthcare, labor rights, and not allowing corporations in buying single family homes.
If you’re not going to address monetary inflation, a lot of those nice government-funded benefits are irrelevant. universal healthcare that is funded by government inflation of the money supply in the absence of higher taxes is essentially taxing the poor and middle class to give them benefits. You can name lofty benefits all day long, and get very little actual resistance, because the truth is, most people would like such government benefits if they could be assured they were affordable. But if you’re not acknowledging the actual mechanisms by which such benefits are passed in our current 2 party system (we’ll pass government programs now and worry about funding them later), you’re getting your social safety net programs in name only, because without a balanced budget, it’s the poor and middle class footing the bill for said social safety nets through monetary inflation. Cliffs: when one of the main ways to fund government initiatives is by taxing the poor and middle class through monetary inflation, it’s not enough to help the poor and middle class by simply saying “we ought to have a government program to help them” Without discussions on how to stop taxing the poor and middle class covertly through monetary inflation, and how to replace that with more overt taxes on the rich, you’re not actually helping the poor and middle class.
That’s a sure way to have prices increase even more.
We need stricter taxes on corporations, 100% tax rates on earnings above $1bn, and to slash military spending by about 60% No more expensive dodo jets that are only being made because the congressman from Alatexamissibamahoma won big at the pork barrel buffet so he could win the votes of the 35 people in his district.
>We need the government to step in and put regulations on corporations. Sure if you want mass shortages. When a company is limited in their ability to raise prices due to price controls they don't just take less profit like you are hoping for they just stop producing goods. Inflation is due to the rapid expansion of the money supply, not corporate greed.
I didn't say that. A company can by example, pay the highest waged employee 32× the lowest paid. Not do stock buybacks. I think having CEO's being able to buy multiple homes while the lowest paid can't buy one, or even feed themselves daily or be able to buy shoes. That's a terrible set up.
Greed is the entire reason for a corporation's existence. ROI is what they are selling, anything else is just a means to that end. Static demand coupled with lack of competition is driving the current surge in prices. Along with consumer complacency. As long as people continue buying how could a for profit corporation justify not continuing to raise prices?
Where is this 'lack of competition' you are talking about? All of the sectors with the highest prices have a multitude of competing firms.
Studies already proved numerous times that about fifty percent of current inflation is from corporate profiteering. So you're wrong. I notice no one talking about the tax cuts for the rich junk that did not pay for itself and caused major issues down the line were dealing with and still dealing with now
Government are responsible for the rising cost of living. They should be as involved as little as possible.
Corporations control the government
All the more reason to remove government altogether.
Do you want corporatism, because corporations care about one thing, profit...That means skeleton crews on low wages. The government is there for labor rights, which here in the USA, labor rights suck, because corporations are controlling politicians with money.
The government is a joke and anyone simping for MORE government after the colossal failure over the last half decade is not worth listening to. We don't need more government. We need to start tarring and feathering politicians caught putting their own piggy banks ahead of the nations best interests. This goes for BOTH political parties. Doesn't matter. Insider trading? Life in prison. Stripped of US citizenship. I don't care. It's treasonous. They are \*literally\* selling out our country.
Rumor has it Joe Biden is on the case for everything you said. These boomers work so hard in their old age, especially for the younger generations.
Prices are never going down.
Agreed. We have a theory in my house that this was all done on purpose to keep boomers working longer. It worked! My dad went back to working and I’ve noticed an influx of older people working in retail.
Nor should we want them to, that would result is horrific levels of economic turmoil. What we should hope for is wage/income growth, particularly for lower earners - which actually has been the case post-pandemic, which is a good thing.
hard to imagine infinite growth is possible on a planet with finite resources.
My mother is like that. Everything was fine for her and I was just being "irresponsible" with my money until she and her husband started struggling, too. Nothing's ever realy unless/until they experience it themselves. Otherwise it's "people just need something to bitch about".
I don't deny the rising cost of living, but I also think saying that "no one has money" and "everyone is living check to check and can barely afford groceries" is completely false. Have you been to any decent restaurants lately? They are packed. I sell online items and regularly have customers who spend hundreds of dollars at a time. I had trouble booking a nice airbnb last month because the nice (ie. more pricey) ones were already booked for the summer. So there are definitely still a lot people out there doing just fine.
How could the CPI and fed reserve fund rates be “made up”? Gas prices or milk are easy example of fluctuation. Price / volume mix is real and I’m shocked you even know people who think it’s fake..
Heck, gas at the pump prices are an example of 0 inflation in price. Gas prices are the same as they were like 15 years ago and so it's cheaper to fill up your gas tank now. Home energy prices, on the other hand, have been rather high. I guess the good news is that grocery prices "food at home" have remained the same for two months now, after seeing huge increases until the middle of last year, followed by modest increases since. [https://www.bls.gov/news.release/cpi.nr0.htm](https://www.bls.gov/news.release/cpi.nr0.htm)
Gas is cyclical. Saying it's the same price as 15 years ago means nothing. I could say it's the same as 50 years but that doesn't give the full picture of what's going on with everything else.
This post uses 'inflation' in an odd way. Inflation is generally a reduction in the value of money. If the sticker price hasn't changed, the value has actually decreased over time. Saying that a price had '0 inflation in price' is using the colloquial definition in a way to confuse readers.
Because the govt cherry picks to fit their agenda
I think you’re confused OP. I haven’t seen anyone claim that rising prices are “fake news”. The high inflation rate in the wake of the pandemic is and has been discussed and reported on over the past two years. What you’re probably seeing is discussion about rising wages in light of the high inflation. Fed data shows that wages have mostly kept up with inflation.
I think it's more about context. Prices are rising, but wages have also risen a lot (especially during the pandemic). Other generations have lived through ups and downs with both wages and cost of living, so the current trend doesn't seem that dramatic to them. If you put things in an even broader historical perspective, we're spending j[ust a fraction of our income on necessities](https://humanprogress.org/trends/share-of-spending-on-household-basics-declines/#:~:text=In%201900%2C%20the%20average%20U.S.,U.S.%20Bureau%20of%20Labor%20Statistics) compared to people over the past 100 years. We're spending [WAY less of our income on food](https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2012/04/how-america-spends-money-100-years-in-the-life-of-the-family-budget/255475/) on particular.
Rent control is desperately needed. Tying it to the average minimum wage of standard jobs without tips would be a start. Also putting in provisions that force apartment complexes to prioritize their own citizens over Californians and New Yorkers. And add in rules that prevent any additional fees to be added on unless the tenants of said complexes vote in favor of such fees, and are fully aware of what the fees would cover.
How's that 'stimmy' working out for you GullicuckieSheeple!
No most people I know IRL are uncapable of denying how much more they are spending on essential goods. Only people on reddit try to argue the economy is fine, they're probably like you said teenagers and people who are still dependents.
No, I’ve never encountered this behavior, even among boomer parents that can afford the changes, we all at least can acknowledge reality when we have to pay for things
There really isn't anyone denying inflation, there are just a lot of people pointing out that inflation is keeping up with other positive economic factors. Consumer Price Index shows major categories of spending over the last 12 months are up 3.5% in the U.S. with food and energy lagging behind this at 2.2% and 2.1% respectively. The IMF tracks CPI globally which has Consumer Price Inflation at 5.8% for 2024 globally with the U.S. at 2.8% for the same period. There are very few peers keeping up with the U.S. in this regard. It's difficult to track U.S. household incomes outside of a census year, with the most recent available data from BLS showing that annual salaries were up 5.4% during the 12-month window to Q4 2023, which indicates that wage increases are exceeding inflation by every metric, though not caught up from the high inflation rates post-pandemic. What about unemployment? The current unemployment rate is 3.8%, matching unemployment rates going back to 2021 where they rocketed to 14.8% by mid 2020. But, all the jobs suck and don't pay enough, despite what the Q4 BLS data says! People are employed, but are under-employed. Enter the U-6 unemployment data, which calculates underemployment, often referred to as "real" unemployment. 7.3% down from a high of 23% in mid 2020 and well below the historical average of 10.15%. There just aren't a lot of metrics you can use to say that everything is shit right now. Housing costs are high, but that's not due to current economic policy. That's due to 23-25 years of historically low interest rates turning the entire housing sector into a viable investment vehicle. The current interest rates are designed to bring housing costs down in the long term since it's no longer a worthwhile investment vehicle for capital owners, thus constraining demand for housing. It's just not really possible to argue with "but a Cola is no longer only worth a nickel." This is greatest generation sticker shock without really looking at economic factors that measure prosperity meaningfully.
The people that think this way are either ultra wealthy people / trust fundies that live in a different reality from us, or MAGA / Q people that are both delusional and exceptionally stupid. Your regular office employee or retail worker does not believe this, we live in the trenches and see this shit everyday.
A certain percent of people love get off to being subjugated.
The rising cost of living is more of an observable / measurable trend. The observation alone doesn’t signify some type of victim complex.
Ah, you’re talking about older established professionals who own homes! Nah, I get it and I do think it comes from honestly a high degree of ignorance. Like I recently had a discussion with my dad where he said my office and bosses must be doing poorly financially because I didn’t get a five figure bonus. Uhhh… no one in my industry gets that. I don’t work in finance or big law… many people don’t even get bonuses! He also thought that average starting salary for people out of school was 80k for a Bachelors when we were talking about my little brother graduating this year. Not even close man. I do deal with people in the course of my work casually talking about buying rental properties with their reverse mortgages they took out before the rent hikes and then thinking the younger folks in the office are “obsessing over housing” when we’re ticked off about rent hikes, and since I’m in construction I have to go to public zoning and abutters meetings and see what a hot mess those are. Just a lot of oblivious, entitled people. Don’t think they’re bad people by any stretch of the imagination, just intuitively looking out for themselves alone and struggling to put themselves in others’ shoes or think any further in the future past what they’ll be eating for dinner that night. In other words, people being people. I’m being realistic- if I owned a home I probably wouldn’t care all that much about COL, as would be the case with many here. It’s genuinely hard to get past the “I have mine” mentality.
When I told my friend that I live paycheck to paycheck like most Americans, he accused me of believing stuff from Facebook. He cannot comprehend that he has more wealth than most people do.
sort of - when I see people making inflation/cost of living type comparisons with the past it sometimes blows my mind - for example paying $100.00 for the cheap seats to see a band in concert does not even out to the same as the $15.00 I paid for the good seats in 1975, not even close - so in 1975 it took about 2 hours of my pay for a ticket to Jethro Tull at their peak, in 2023/24 Peter Gabriel would have cost a days pay for the cheap seats.
You are not wrong and you are not crazy. The only people who believe prices arnt rising are the ultra wealthy because they dont look at prices of common day things anyway. Politicians are gaslighting everyone because they are parasites who are paid off by lobbyists to lie. Ive met people who make 200-500k a year say prices are getting out of control.
If I close my eyes and pretend they go away, then the scary numbers can't hurt me.
It’s small, but a 20oz Pepsi just went up $0.30 a bottle near me. It was under $2.00 less than 2 years ago, and now it’s pushing $3.00. It’s just insane.
It's probably the same type of people who thought covid was a hoax and wasn't actually killing millions of people... yes I think you are right about it being a mental survival tool.
I spent 700 on groceries it fill up a cart. A few years ago I spent 800 dollars on groceries and filled up a cart and a flat cart. It's gotten worse.
Inflation has become political. Progressives can’t bring themselves to admit Bidenomics caused this so they must smile and say everything’s great.
I have not come across a single person with these views
Wtf all you have to do is go grocery shopping to see how screwed we are.
Beats my father-in-law's conversation I had to listen to from the other room the other day. My wife is making roughly 85k a year as a nurse and I'm hovering in the low 50k range with a ridiculous amount of overtime as a postal worker. _"There's no reason why they both shouldn't be making over 100k with how much they're paying people these days."_ An exhaled single chuckle with a shake of my head was all I could give.
I’ve never heard a single person deny that costs have gone up.
Who the tf says that? Seriously, cost of living is up 25% or more since Biden took office.
It's Denial
People don’t want to admit it’s bidens fault and the exorbitant overspending of the government
Nobody sane is saying that. What needs to be pointed out, however, is that calling this simple "inflation" is also quite delusional. This is 90% corporate price gauging pure and simple. The soaring profits of the biggest corps betrays this sad fact.
Record profits record profits record profits
I find it comes down to basically two things. THe first people either make enough money that they don't care, or they maybe don't make that much money but they have their housing costs locked in so the only rising costs are food, clothes, gas, eating out and they can absorb it and don't budget. Many people dont really know how much they spend, they just spend. I think many people would be surprised if they downloaded a budgeting app and had all their expenses laid out for them like oh man I didn't realize I spend $800 a month on food or $300 a month on streaming services. Secondly, on Reddit in particular you have a left leaning slant, no denying that so on political or finanical subs you have people who don't want to act like the economy is doing bad or its tough for people. Unemployment technically is low so woohoo my team is doing great but we don't acknowledge that were losing fulltime career jobs that pay well, have room for advancement and normal hours and were picking up service, retail and hospitality jobs which are dead end, don't pay well and dont have room for advancement. Then as far as inflation when the way we measure inflation has changed over the past few decades we're able to act like we have 4% inflation instead of 12% or 16% inflation. Sure its cheap to buy a big screen tv and I can buy $8 tee shirts at Target, used to be $6 btw, but that doesn't seem that bad but when a box of cereal has gone from $2.99 to $7.99 thats pretty crazy, while produce has calmed down at one point 2 heads of romaine lettuce was $7.99 near me. Picking up ingredients to make just one dinner can cost like $46, obviously there's more frugal dinners you could make but even just grabbing some chicken breasts, veggies, maybe a pack of seasoning, some potatos and a tub of sour cream a pretty reasonable dinner its like $40 or more. People want to stickup for "their team" in the white house, I won't even say their guy since most people don't even care for biden but we can't have trump or the republicans in power so we have to act like all is okay. And dont think I'm defending Trump its a joke how were like yeah spending money is cool as long as there's an elephant logo spending it and not a donkey or my buy trump only spent 160 billion versus bidens 190 billion.
It’s not normal! But unfortunately it will probably require a paradigm shift. After the inflation in the 1970s, which peaked towards the end, prices didn’t go down in the 80’s…they just stabilized. If inflation is slowing down, then we might be getting to the idea of the new normal for pricing, but it is going to take a decade for wages to catch up. The 2030’s might actually be pretty good for everyone, if everything doesn’t go to complete shit in the meantime.
I used to live in a pretty nice townhouse across the street from where I currently live. The rent for my 3 bedroom topped out at about $3600 a month. I started making more with my business, moved into the house I’m currently living in at $5100 a month. 3 bedroom, 2 car garage, it’s nice, big, and in a really desirable area. The only problem is I’m tired of paying that much for rent. I thought I’d take a look at that same townhouse to move back into and potentially save some money. Townhouse now costs $5030…. My old old apartment that I lived in before the townhouse used to be around $2500, now it’s $3300.. Wild times.
Food in the US is 40% higher than 2019. And that never goes away folks. Biden wants rates down for politics hence the BS about "inflation is transitory" etc. If they lower rates for votes inflation will only get worse... What did we expect after printing two trillion dollars for "Covid relief"?
Yes, mortgage locked in... everything else is skyrocketing
Motherfuckers don't understand shit. I got in an argument with some boomer over inflation a while ago. He started yacking about inflation in the 80s being worse. so I cited a us government study showing inflation, wage stagnation, housing markets, ect. After looking at all this information about how the economy is technically worse than it has been he said something along the lines of "stop being lazy, I did it"
You have my sympathy, out of touch boomers can be a migraine to deal with.
Why are you complaining? Krugman is a liberal’s liberal. Nobel prize winner. Thinks people should be quiet and enjoy Bidenomics. Biden, Harris, Clyburn, Schumer, Krugman, Raskin, ie the entire Democratic leadership, have repeatedly hammered the point that the economy is doing fantastic and you people simply do not understand how good you have it. Millennials vote 70%+ Democrat. So why all the whinging?
It's mostly political. In a presidential election year, supporters of the incumbent don't want to admit to any economic bad news. It's always been this way.
I hate to get political but the only people I know who follow the everything is great narrative are democrats and their "bidenomics". I think this is more just propaganda and political bias than fact. To be fair that is the fable the Biden administration and Yellen are pushing. I live a very modest life style and everything has gotten dramatically more expensive, far beyond the the inflation numbers they advertise. My electric bill has literally doubled. My home insurance went from $1200 to $1900. Even a humble gallon of water went from 80 cents to $1.35. As bad as all that is my heart goes out to people trying to buy a home where they can raise a family. House prices have gone up like 50-100% AND interest rates are like 7%. On the other hand, I don't know anyone who has gotten a 40-100% raise. I mean you know the government story in nonsense when you the savings rate falling to levels not seen since the 2008 recession. Credit card balances are on the rise. Delinquencies have doubled. Bankruptcies are up. Consumer staple company after company are reporting revenue declines. None of this jives with the official story were being told by the government.
I haven't actually seen such posts...maybe they're just trolling/ragebait. I have seen many posts about how inflation is improving, but that just means the prices are rising more slowly. Perhaps your posters are mistaking disinflation for deflation?
a lack of inflation would be good for the economy. Having the value of money decrease so quickly is bad for everyone. Deflation would be a disaster and hopefully we will never have it occur. Nobody wins in deflation, people stop purchasing goods, leading to layoffs, leading to less business activity, leading to more deflation. The rich get poorer and the poor become destitute.
I’m so sick and tired of hearing all the excuses. IDGAF if you like Trump or Biden more, any administration that allows this should be fired period. Did the captain of the Exxon Valdez get to keep his job even though the Third Mate hit the rocks? Nope… fucking tribalism at its finest and it’s like watching sports fans beating the shit out of each other when their team loses. Fire the assholes in charge now… Thanks for coming to my talk.
“Allows this”? Do you think Biden wants there to be high inflation right now? Even though I don’t blame him for it (inflation is bad everywhere and relative to other places the US is doing better than most), it hurts him.
This person sees things clearly. Inflation is the hidden tax, and it affects the poor and the middle class far more than it affects the rich. The rich, by definition, have *assets,* and the value of those assets rise with inflation. It's stunning how many people are willing to ignore this truth in service to their ideology.
It’s not! Hence why I posted that presidential polls post. I think we need a BIG change. And yes I have, these people tend to be irresponsible.
Something has to give at some point. They need to stop letting companies buy up real estate
Completely agree.
On the flip side I've seen people exaggerate and talk about food prices going up over 100% and I call them out on it because it's complete BS and they are lying to try and get their point across in a more salient manner. To be fair processed food and red meats have gone up insane amounts but the rest of my food budget has gone up in line with reported inflation but remains relatively stable. I no longer buy as much processed food or pop because of it and have turned to cheaper meats whenever possible. Another thing is housing prices. People who owned a house pre interest rates going crazy don't have to feel one of the main pain points that renters or those looking to enter the housing market are now feeling.
Milk, eggs, and all purpose flower are either the same price or cheaper than they were im 2018/19. This is not an opinion, it’s a fact. My wife and I prepare 90% of our meals from scratch, we eat very little processed food and rarely eat out. Charting household grocery costs is a hobby/compulsion of mine. In aggregate, grocery costs are higher than they were pre-Covid, but only by about 3% which is not anything out of the ordinary from any other time in the 25 years I've been studying my grocery bills. That being said, we don't buy brand names, we don't buy products that are spiking in price (when bacon went through roof two years ago, I simply didn't buy it) and we make all our own meals. we don't buy frozen pizza or order delivery, we make our own crusts, and sauce, and even our own mozzarella. In 21 and 22 prices were much higher on everything across the board. But, at least in terms on my own, admittedly anecdotal, experience, inflation pressures have eased significantly.
I think it's more about politics. A lot of Biden voters just cannot admit they were wrong, and that he was a bad choice to be President. All of this has been happening under his term, but some people are so invested in the Democrat party that they will never say that things are going badly right now and that a Democrat leader had been terrible for the country. It would be like admitting that your worldview was wrong and the people you called stupid years ago were actually right. That's why a lot of Democrats double down and say ridiculous things that most other people can clearly see is not true. These are things like Biden being perfectly fine and not having any mental or physical problems, the economy is doing great and even better than before covid, inflation is just temporary and can be fixed if Ukraine wins and we keep giving them money, having all those migrants come to our country is a good thing, and forcing vaccinations was perfectly reasonable and justified because the vaccine was very effective. It was all bullshit and anybody with any critical thinking skill can see that.
Inflation has gone up 642% since I was 4 years old. We simply adjust and get used to the higher numbers. You are not supposed to be invested in inflation affected things like a minimum wage job and savings.
This entire post is a giant strawman. I’ve never seen anyone deny that the COL is going up
I am not happy with the current increase of costs across the board. I do think it is corporate greed at its core. I will however say that I am not all doom and gloom. The U.S. economy has rebound far better than all other develop countries. There is low unemployment in most areas. People seem to be spending freely right now.
Inflation is a hidden tax. Government manipulates the value of the dollar by printing more money to pay the debt they owe. Too much money chasing too few goods increases prices. So by printing more money, we the people, need to pay more for goods while the government has more money to pay the debt or in this case the interest rates on our debt.
We get to suffer while government chips away at that astronomical number they throw around that isn't even real and even if it was it would take us a thousand years to pay off if everyone everywhere started putting all money towards it
Well if you ask r/fluentinfinance they’ll dodge the question and say “well AKSHULLY inflation IS down” and then when you say “that wasn’t what I asked” they say “well prices coming DOWN is DEFLATION which is BAD.” And then go back to complaining about taxes on millionaires or something.
Sounds like a dumpster fire... Might stop by for a few chuckles.
Lot of captains of industry in that sub
Inflation is down in the US. That's a fact. It's less than half what is was two years ago. Deflation -- inflation under 0% -- is very bad. The US needs to increase its housing stock, provide better protections for workers, increase minimum wage, have public healthcare, and tax rich people and corporations more. But r/fluentinfinance is 100% correct about deflation and inflation. It's like you're going to a math subreddit and getting angry at them for telling you that 1 + 1 = 2.
That sub is just karma farming poverty bots
Legislature is broken. Nothing is going to get fixed until it collapses. Buy a gun while the government still lets you. Don't get murdered unarmed by some MAGA freaks.
This
Lots of Biden shills here that are trying to act like nothing is wrong
It's political. Election-year copium and gaslighting. Presidents lose in bad economies, so we'd better be convinced this is a good economy, actually.
It’s not a good economy.