What used cars tell us about the risk of too much inflation hitting the economy

https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2021/03/13/car-prices-inflation-economy/

by troydavis • 5 years ago

20 32 5 years ago

seibelj• 5 years ago

My grocery bill is up 40% from pre-pandemic and I shop at the cheap grocery store. I buy basically the same stuff as I have for the past 10 years. Yet the government claims inflation is minimal. Combined with the value of my property rising and my 401k, I refuse to believe inflation is what the government claims. Huge scam going on here. The government has no incentive to say CPI is rising because that would require them to raise social security payments, raise interest rates, and slow down on money printing. So my conclusion is they are lying, because I see inflation staring me in the face.

ArkanExplorer• 5 years ago

Its amazing the game we are going through just to avoid fixing the pension system (ie. reducing pension payments and increasing retirement ages to sustainable levels).

anm893• 5 years ago

I think you are underestimating how severely in the hole many our pension systems are and how much of a political non starter it is to suggest that those pensions can't be paid.

One does not simply fix the pension system.

credit_guy3• 5 years ago

The government has no incentive to say CPI is rising

Ok, maybe the government has certain incentives, but how exactly do you propose the CPI is manipulated? The guys doing the actual calculation receive a government salary that is fixed, they don't get any bonus linked to the outcome of the measurement. Their bosses don't get a bonus based on how low the CPI comes out either. In fact nobody in the government gives a flying fudge if the deficit goes up or down because the CPI reads this or that. They will receive their salary regardless. Conversely, if one day it turns out they did manipulate the CPI, they may lose their jobs, and even may be dragged in courts for years. All for what? For a government salary? Or are you saying someone is actually bribing them? For someone to bribe them, that someone needs to make a profit. How exactly does that happen?

mandelbrotwurst• 5 years ago

The definition of the index, what does or not get counted in the baskets of goods, various “adjustments” etc. allow for plenty of manipulation of the headline numbers irrespective of whether or not the calculations themselves are being done honestly.

another_comment2• 5 years ago

> how exactly do you propose the CPI is manipulated

One way is OER, aka Owners Equivalent Rent. Great article https://wolfstreet.com/2021/03/11/house-price-inflation-in-c... (look at that graph half way down).

Another way is "hedonic adjustments". https://www.economicshelp.org/blog/603/inflation/hedonics-an...

anm893• 5 years ago

The guys doing the actual calculation receive a government salary that is fixed, they don't get any bonus linked to the outcome of the measurement. Their bosses don't get a bonus based on how low the CPI comes out either.

Assuming everyone always stayed in the same job position, this might be true, but advancement within the system is frequently based on whether your work is producing the desired results so when you treat this as a multi round game, their salary level can be tied to the degree which the data they produce conforms to the desired narrative.

perl4ever5• 5 years ago

I don't want to encourage any conspiracy theories, but on the topic of incentives, there are a few at a higher level than the government employees you're thinking of.

One is that a number of governments, including the US, UK, Canada, and Australia, issue bonds linked to inflation. That is, as I understand it, they return a fixed amount over the measured inflation from some index. In other words, understating inflation would reduce the borrower's (the government's) payments.

Another is that Social Security in the US (and maybe similar things elsewhere) is periodically adjusted for inflation, so that the recipients don't lose purchasing power. Again, if inflation were understated, then the government would save money.

There might be other incentives to overstate inflation; the above is just what came to mind, so I am not implying that there is an overall pressure to understate inflation like people tend to claim without evidence. I wouldn't think there are that many inflation linked bonds compared to regular ones.

Ideally the people at or near the top who may have incentives to distort things cannot do it because the low-level bureaucrats keep on doing their jobs. But it hardly seems guaranteed at all times in all places.

evanlivingston2• 5 years ago

This is the same realization I had recently.

The value of my house is likely up 15% from last year. My investments grew 20%, my income went up, getting food from any restaurant seems to cost at least $40 for two people, hard to find a bar of chocolate under $4, cup of coffee likewise. There is very little telling me my dollar today is only 1.5%-2% less valuable than last year.

sjg0072• 5 years ago

You can get a cup of coffee at McDonald's for $1. Medium starbucks is ~$2 And obviously it's even cheaper if you make it yourself. I'm not sure what chocolate you buy but I find cadburys dairy milk for $2 or so. Hersheys has a line of chocolate bars at that price point too. You can buy that in bulk too I guess to be even cheaper.

jfengel3• 5 years ago

The twenty dollar bill was called a "yuppie food coupon" back when yuppies were a thing. You went to a restaurant, and regardless of the price of your meal, you expected that a $20 would be food, tax, beverage, and tip, without expecting all that much change back. So if "food from any restaurant seems to cost at least $40 for two people", that would suggest that the cost of the yuppie food coupon hasn't changed since the 80s.

Similarly "Starbucks" has been called "Fourbucks" since at least the 90s. If you don't want to pay that much, it's basically a dollar at any convenience store -- literally for pretty much any volume.

As for your investments... yeah, I do think there's inflation there. We're Quantitatively Easing money directly into the stock market, and it doesn't seem to be making its way out. That's a problem, but not a CPI problem.

Similarly, the housing market is up in some places and way down in others -- most visibly in New York and San Francisco, where a ton of people had been paying a lot of money. The money appears to have moved without changing the total amount being paid all that much.

imtringued2• 5 years ago

If the inflation was really as high as you said then deficit spending wouldn't be necessary at all.

tanseydavid3• 5 years ago

> If the inflation was really as high as you said then deficit spending wouldn't be necessary at all.

Can you please elaborate on what you mean by this?

PebblesHD• 5 years ago

It’s a similar story in Australia, leaving me constantly wondering what exactly CPI or inflation is supposed to measure. Cost of housing, both rented and especially to buy, are up astronomically, food costs about the same but packages are getting smaller, transport costs are increasing, yet the reporting from our central banks is saying all is well and inflation is low.

Even if the purpose of their measurement is not necessarily the lived daily experience of consumers, those numbers are used to drive policy that is, so I think it might be time to define a new metric that more closely reflects the actual cost of living.

another_comment2• 5 years ago

> I think it might be time to define a new metric that more closely reflects the actual cost of living.

We had different inflation stats back in the day. The US government has been slowly changing them. This guy uses the old official methodology to calculate inflation today. He gets way higher inflation using the old methodology and plugging in todays numbers. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shadowstats.com

There is a lot of controversy here, but I think inflation is definitely higher than reported.

joelwilliamson• 5 years ago

The Shadowstats methodology is to take BLS CPI and add 3%.

If your theory about what's wrong with CPI is "BLS is subtracting 3% from the true value" that is a useful fix. If you're concerned about the basket of goods they use, or deflators for quality improvements, or substitution effects, or any other technical concern it isn't clear that Shadowstats provides any value.

perl4ever5• 5 years ago

I think inflation is definitely higher than reported.

I don't, and it's pretty straightforward why. You can argue about how high inflation was over the past year and about technical details. But if you think it's significantly and systematically off and has been for a long time, then it would compound and make a big difference.

Back when my sense of "normal" prices was established, a pound of spaghetti was a dollar. The official total amount of inflation in the last twenty years was a little over 50% or a little over 2% a year. I'm confident the official figures are in the ballpark, because if inflation had really been say 5%, then spaghetti would be twice the price it is.

Car prices are also a useful benchmark. A Honda Civic EX is a pretty standard unit of transportation. In 2001, it was $17350, and in 2021, $25495. That's an increase of about 47% vs. official CPI went up about 50%. And notice that we're not accounting for any sort of improvement in the product, such as all the safety equipment, more horsepower, etc. So you can't complain about "hedonic" adjustments.

A funny thing on the Wikipedia page on Shadowstats is:

"Shadowstats has not changed its $175 per year subscription fee since at least 2006"

If there's so much inflation, how come the price of reading about it hasn't gone up?

anm893• 5 years ago

The Fed's mission is to control inflation and unemployment. Note how the two most ridiculous fudged statistics published by the US government are inflation and unemployment.

imtringued2• 5 years ago

, yet the reporting from our central banks is saying all is well and inflation is low.

Low inflation is a catastrophe. I'm surprised you don't know that much. No, things aren't well.

tanseydavid3• 5 years ago

> Low inflation is a catastrophe. I'm surprised you don't know that much.

I am surprised that you did not bother to explain what you mean by this.

What used cars tell us about the risk of too much inflation hitting the economy

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