quote:
I realized it’s politically convenient to downplay the stock market under Biden, and I’m no fan of his whatsoever, but at some point it gets a little embarrassing.

I understand. There are certainly some who do this. My personal problems with the market (and perhaps some others on this board) are politically neutral. Both sides have been fiscally irresponsible.

quote:
Why is that hard to believe? People have a lot more money in their investment accounts, their homes are worth a lot more, and their pay has essentially kept up with inflation.

The first two are nominal values (which we all know are irrelevant) and the third is not true across the board.

The service jobs with big increases were the lowest paying and HAD to make these increases or risk all of their workers dropping out of the labor force. The rest knew their workers could afford to trim the fat in one place or another and thus were less aggressive.

quote:
Also, “actual inflation” as defined by who?

Who you gonna believe, me or your lying eyes? I don’t care what agency du jour tries to tell me inflation is. I’ve seen it with my own eyes. We had closer to 20% inflation at the peak. We’re well past 35% net, and as I said that’s just in goods. I personally witnessed a farm sell for ~$3500/acre shortly before Covid and the one right next to it sold for ~$5500 last year. Comparable land. Residential in desirable areas has been even more egregious.

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Posted by slackster

Houston

Member since Mar 2009

85489 posts

Posted on 1/20/24 at 9:16 am to Decisions

quote:
t certainly is. What do you think fueled that surge? Productivity and efficiency increases? Expanding, new markets? Or currency debasement?

Various combinations of all of those, like it usually is in history.

quote:
The first two are nominal values (which we all know are irrelevant) and the third is not true across the board

They’re not irrelevant when they’re up a lot, and all of your wage data is in a 12m or shorter stretch. The point I’ve been making is over the last 3 years cumulatively. Wages have continued to climb in 2023 while inflation has cooled, so they’ve climbed back out of the hole created mostly in 2022. Your other chart starts in the beginning of the pandemic and is pretty much useless as a result.

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Posted by slackster

Houston

Member since Mar 2009

85489 posts

Posted on 1/20/24 at 9:28 am to Decisions

quote:
Who you gonna believe, me or your lying eyes? I don’t care what agency du jour tries to tell me inflation is. I’ve seen it with my own eyes. We had closer to 20% inflation at the peak. We’re well past 35% net, and as I said that’s just in goods. I personally witnessed a farm sell for ~$3500/acre shortly before Covid and the one right next to it sold for ~$5500 last year. Comparable land. Residential in desirable areas has been even more egregious.

As far as land/home prices go, I really don’t get the complains. 66% of Americans own homes that have gone up a ton in value, so that’s a problem? People don’t buy homes very often, so this “yeah but homes are unaffordable” is a problem for a small subset of people that don’t also already own a home.

And as I’ve pointed out, we’re not well past 35% net. You can gripe about the weighting of CPI and whatnot, but dig into the individual categories.