Are there inflation indicators that aren’t government controlled? Don’t think anything coming out of trump influenced bodies is worth the paper it’s on anymore
Oh no someone is getting fired again. This poor soul forgot that telling the truth is forbidden
The surge in services costs seems to be a bit of a surprise (?):
> Services inflation provided much of the push higher, moving 1.1% higher in July for the largest gain also since March 2022. Trade services margins rose 2%, coming amid ongoing developments in President Donald Trump’s tariff implementations.
> In addition, 30% of the increase in services came from a 3.8% increase in machinery and equipment wholesaling. Also, portfolio management fees surged 5.8% and airline passenger services prices rose 1%.
* https://www.cnbc.com/2025/08/14/ppi-inflation-report-july-20...
> The government on Tuesday reported a mild increase in consumer prices in July, though rising costs for services like dental care and airline tickets caused a measure of underlying inflation to post its largest gain in six months.
> While financial markets have priced in an interest rate cut from the Federal Reserve next month, rising services inflation and the expectation tariffs could still significantly boost goods prices left some economists doubtful of a resumption in policy easing in the absence of labor market deterioration.
* https://www.reuters.com/world/us/us-producer-prices-accelera...
When it comes to (Fed) policy, the other thing they look at besides inflation/PCE is employment, which appears to be softening (see recent revisions which caused recent Trump-BLS turmoil).
The US risk for stagflation seems to be growing:
* https://www.investopedia.com/terms/s/stagflation.asp
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stagflation
* https://paulkrugman.substack.com/p/its-beginning-to-smell-a-... (check out the music video link at the end)
Whatever the problem is, it's everything but unicorn funding. We can be sure of that on this forum.
2.8% doesn’t seem that crazy to me? Don’t we target like 2-2.5?
Frankly, I haven't seen a single country where I spent any significant amount of time, where official inflation numbers were not seeing as a complete joke by the common folks. And my experience usually matched it.
There's plenty of space to hide reality when building a price index.
Price index do not capture the reality of most people cost of living. They don't capture the family that have to buy margarine instead of butter, because butter became too expensive, while margarine became cheaper, Weight both items as the same, and voilá! no inflation, increases in the price of butter were cancelled by cheaper margarine, fuck you if you prefer butter.
We can also do the same with housing: Capture prices as the average of a basket of cities. In reality, some cities will have absurd price increases while others are in decadence. The average prices increase of a disputed locality like NYC metro area will probably be masked by the fact that houses in BeltRustAssEnd, MI are becoming increasingly cheap. But, for the real person, what the fuck matters if BeltRustAssEnd houses are cheap as bananas? Who can get a job there?
And of course, a single number cannot capture the subtleties of reality like the fact that while it is great that 80" TVs are now so cheap that they can be bought by the commoner, this fact means fucking nothing if having a roof over your head in a place where you don't need to spend most of your live commuting is becoming increasingly too expensive for a lot of the same folks. Too bad the commoner is just a paycheck away from being in the streets as he cannot pay for a house! He now has a TV that not even Queen Elisabeth could have just a few years ago!
You can read the actual BLS PPI release here: https://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/ppi.pdf
Another thing to watch for is the BLS import prices which show prices excluding tariffs. If these remain flat for July as they did for June, it would be another data point suggesting tariffs induced inflation.
And this is after they massaged the numbers, to avoid getting fired?
This is what happens when the same item now has a %20 tariff on it.
Tarrif's will do that...
I’m always shocked at how many economics experts there are on a tech forum!
In Norway our food prices has gone up by more than 4 in one month while we are destroying any capacity for local production while we have protectionism that would make Trump blush.
How is that not newsworthy, but this is?
It's been clear for years that the actual the majority of people are experiencing is well above the reported numbers.
I dont think it’s the tariffs. I really think the entire category of merchants looked at each other and figured it was fine to raise prices. Similar to when one person makes the decision to cross the street on the red light, and then a few more trickle after, until the whole sidewalk follows along.
Six chicken nuggets at McDonald’s runs you $6. Fuck that, this is just greed. The logistical argument that fake ass grinded chicken got more expensive to ship, a recipe that never changed, suddenly more expensive to make. I don’t buy it (literally).
I’ll eat water and beans until this type of economic warfare is over. Can’t stand these greedy bastards.
Over the years I have read a few articles or blogs that make the argument that if government inflation figures in the US were calculated as they do in Europe, then our reported US inflation figures would be much higher. Can anyone here verify this?
Our main problems involve under the table unreported to the public military expenditures. If you look at a map of our military bases, we have many bordering China. I think our total number is close to 900. Those costs are a bleeding hemorage to the middle class tax payer who aren’t getting a cut of military profiteering because they don’t own ‘defense’ stocks.
Consumer debt is almost as much of a worry as government debt.
Eventually countries that don't spend most of their treasure on their military will win. There has to be a balance between true defense spending and healthy spending like feeding and educating children, infrastructure, R&D that helps society, etc.
So if you tax imported raw materials, intermediary goods, and other inputs, then producer prices go up... who would have known!