Right, that's what I meant about the real stats, as in the number of unemployed. :-)
I ran across this on another thread, it's pretty telling about the real state of the economy...and it even left out the cost of food:
Posted on 07/24/2014 4:59:28 AM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
Call it doomsday prepper economics. For more than five years, many Republicans and conservatives have warned that catastrophe is nigh. Washington's deficit spending and the Federal Reserve's excessive money printing will lead to a financial crisis worse than the Great Recession, they prophesied. Inflation will skyrocket, the dollar will collapse, and the Chinese will dump treasuries, they swore. As Ron Paul, the libertarian former GOP congressman and presidential candidate, said back in 2009: "More inflation is absolutely the wrong way to go. We're taking a recession and trying to turn it into a depression. We're going to see a real calamity."
Many GOP politicians have since echoed Paul's prediction. But the Next Great Inflation never happened. The Consumer Price Index, including food and energy, has risen by an annual average of just 1.6 percent since 2008, below the Fed's 2 percent inflation target. During the Great Inflation of the 1970s and early 1980s, by contrast, prices rose five times faster.
This information isn't a secret. The Labor Department releases inflation data monthly on its website. Yet inflation fears still rage on the right. Those concerns are a big reason why Republicans continue to push for a balanced budget ASAP. They're why the GOP wants to saddle the Fed with restrictive new rules.
Regardless of the potential merits of those policy ideas, the inflation alarmism driving them is taking a weird turn. Some Republicans and conservatives now argue that Washington is figuring inflation all wrong, maybe even intentionally. Better, they say, to trust independent outside sources such as the website ShadowStats, which "exposes and analyzes flaws" in government economic data. According to one set of ShadowStats calculations, the true inflation rate is nearly 10 percent today. The inflation truth is out there.
In a recent National Review Online article, conservative author Amity Shlaes approvingly cites ShadowStats as supporting her thesis that "inflation is higher than what the official data suggest." Others fans include conservative intellectual Niall Ferguson, Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.), and a good chunk of the conservative blogosphere.
ShadowStats' popularity on the right is crazy — because the site's methodology has been roundly ridiculed by both economists and business journalists. Critics also note that the subscription price for the ShadowStats newsletter has remained unchanged for years. Inflation for thee, but not for me. Beyond that, MIT's Billion Price Project, which tracks prices from online retailers every day, puts U.S. inflation at just over 2 percent. And consider this: If inflation were really 10 percent, that would mean the real economy, adjusted for inflation, has been sharply shrinking — yet somehow still adding 2 million net new jobs a year.
If GOP inflationistas had their way, the weak U.S. recovery would almost surely be even weaker. Just look at Europe. Unlike the Fed, the inflation-phobic European Central Bank sat on its hands despite weak growth. The result has been an unemployment rate nearly twice America's and a nasty double-dip recession. Of course, inflation is lower than in America — so low, in fact, that the region risks a dangerous deflationary spiral of falling prices and falling wages.
Why this GOP inflation obsession? Maybe it's a legacy of how rapidly rising prices in the 1970s swept conservatives into power in both America and Great Britain. Maybe it's how many conservative talk radio shows are sponsored by gold companies who stand to benefit from inflation hysteria. Maybe it's a belief that every single economic metric must be a nightmare under President Obama.
But whatever the reason, the GOP's preoccupation with phantom price increases is distracting it from the actual problems afflicting the U.S. economy — such as low social mobility, stagnant wages, and the decline of middle-class work. The price of not addressing those issues is rising every year. And that is the kind of inflation worth obsessing over.
Long term, it will be the only way to go. Because the only possible way the US can pay back the national debt is by using inflated dollars.
This guy is no dolt….but I do find this article a bit disturbing. I am suprised to see it.
Where does this guy buy his gas? Where does he buy his groceries? Please let me know, because when Obclown came into office, gasoline was $1.89/gallon as was milk. My grocery store milk is $3.99 like my gas. What a liar he is!
“So this dolt actually believes we’ve been adding two million jobs a year? “
We might be, at McDonalds...and they’re all part time. “We’ve added X million jobs” is a meaningless thing, especially when they’re replacing old jobs anyhow. The real stats are how many people are unemployed, and how many are underemployed (a giant problem today).
“And who does his grocery shopping for him? Or does the American Enterprise Institute have a subsidized or free commissary like politburo members used to avail themselves of?”
Yes, food and energy inflation have been the worst, and are conveniently ignored by current government statistical methods - hence ShadowStats.
The most ironic thing is that this government, supposedly for the “little guy” has implemented policies that really flatten the “little guy”, and almost entirely benefit the 1%. The only “little guy” that’s done OK is the one with no job that’s not retired. Food stamps have increased by 30% due to inflation (lol) but social security has only gone up by 1% or so. It’s disgraceful.
“Long term, it will be the only way to go. Because the only possible way the US can pay back the national debt is by using inflated dollars.”
I don’t think that’s true, but it would take an entirely different approach to growing the economy.
There should be zero price inflation, coupled with some healthy wage inflation. Real wages have been declining for decades.
I don’t care what government statistics say. All I know is gas prices are double what they were 8 years ago. A gallon of milk on sale today is still more expensive than regular price was a few years back. Pork and beef prices have shot through the roof; bacon is nearly double what I’m used to paying for it, and I’m paying prices for ground beef that would have bought me a decent steak not that long ago.
Produce is mostly steady in regular price, but the frequent low-price sales are now very few and far between.
For everything else, the price is either getting higher or the quantity is getting smaller for the same price. And this isn’t just a “back in my day...” rant, it’s been painfully obvious and rapid over just the last couple of years.
Even if you exclude all of that, job growth has struggled to keep up with population growth. Labor force participation rate is at about a 4 decade low right now.
I firmly believe we have exchanged our inflation problem, for an even bigger problem of having exported a (massive) amount of what used to be American industry to China.
A bigger problem in my opinion.
Sure we’re paying a smaller amount for what we buy. The big big problem, is we are PAYING that amount to China.
China is now the second-largest economy in the entire world. Challenging ours already.
America needs to make things. We need to bring back production, to America.
This is a huge problem.
I don’t see anyone, focusing on American production.
Right, that's what I meant about the real stats, as in the number of unemployed. :-)
I ran across this on another thread, it's pretty telling about the real state of the economy...and it even left out the cost of food:
The reasons the price food hasn’t gone up more is the people that actually pay for their own food instead of swiping an EBT card are cutting back on what they are buying reducing demand and they are changing their eating habits.
When pork chops get too expensive they eat stew. When stew gets too expensive they eat beans and rice.
More and more people are also turning to gardening and raising their own food further reducing demand.
He’s a perfect example of someone that lives in a bubble.
People that live in bubbles have no clue what’s outside their bubble.
I don't see anyone focusing on American production either. You'd think that there'd be at least one major Republican who'd make it a central issue for national defense reasons.
And you'd think that there'd be at least one major Democrat who'd make it a central issue for union reasons.
But no one with power or influence seems to care. Not Obama, not, Hillary, not Palin, not Bush, none of them.
Hamburger meat is $5 a pound and onions are $1.30 a pound. Are those "phantom" price increases?
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