Inflation Isn’t just 2% for a Small Brewery

https://medium.com/@john.r.holler/death-by-inflation-a5b123235864

by lgregg • 6 years ago

15 6 6 years ago

anm89• 6 years ago

This is unbelievably adept. It's weird how understanding this concept is like a virus for your mind, that once you see it, reframes everything else. It happened for me and it clearly happened for this author.

They say "follow the money" if you want to understand something, and if you want to understand or socio political system the way you follow the money is by understanding the fed and monetary policy.

londons_explore• 6 years ago

I'd like to see independent (ie. Not made by government agencies) estimates of real world inflation.

Do they exist?

thoughtstheseus• 6 years ago

See the Billion Prices Project by MIT for all things inflation. Still lots of government data there though.

candiodari• 6 years ago

Google "Big Mac Index" for an example.

TLDR: inflation doubles prices in 18 years. So it is math.pow(2.0, 1.0/18.0) - 1 = 3.8% per year between 1986 and 2004.

4.15% between 2004 and 2013 and has been rising further. Let's assume it's 4.3% to 4.5% now ...

commonturtle• 6 years ago

Great read. Inflation has become one of those numbers where we assume the definition is reasonable but it often breaks down when in contact with reality. In this case the basket of goods used to calculate the CPI didn't match the goods the author's business needed.

flashyfaffe2• 6 years ago

Worth to mention that inflation is more sneaky than it seems. It has been partially mentioned with the degradation of the quality of stuffs or services bought. Another way to cause inflation is the increasing number of law bited and applied that owners need to comply with. Bein up to date with the legislation,etc is clearly time consuming. This always comes at yhe owner's cost and can't hardly pass to their clients ( unless you're Amazon or Apple). I would recommend to read Thomas Sowel's book and an artcile that blow my mind called "being poor is expensive". This shocked me as I realised how true were his statements.

Inflation Isn’t just 2% for a Small Brewery

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