But if you look at the sibling comment, all of that came from "Food away from home ". In other words, it's all because of takeout/restaurants, not groceries. Those were actually dragging inflation down.
But if you don't mind, I'll take 4.2% from your pay.
It serves the US Energy Dominance Agenda against China, Japan, India and the EU.
The Trump administration does not care about "its" population. There were already rumors early in the Trump term that Trump would not mind a recession so that his real estate cronies could buy cheap foreclosures.
So it is all a double win for the oligarchs. The stock market is still fine, nothing else matters.
From what I can tell it’s also supercharging coal.
…how? What is this agenda? Juicing short-term energy exports? That’s not a “dominance agenda.”
Basically, looking at inflation over time, we look pretty good here.
And the trend line would bend differently if we could just learn the lesson.
Prices are subject to the combination of the value of the currency and the value of the product. Food may be worth more than in the past, for example, so you cannot look at the value of the currency alone.
"Well, inflation since 2015 is nonexistent if you swap out steaks for 3 day old catfish and fruits for kool aid packets"
The higher-frequency data are more concerning. CPI “increased 0.5 percent on a seasonally adjusted basis in May, after rising 0.6 percent in April” and 0.9 percent in March [1]. (0.3, 0.2, 0.3 percent for December, January, February, respectively.)
So a linear trend of 6% from March, closer to 9% if one extrapolates the March-April-May quarter. Almost all of that driven by food and energy. (Core spiked to 0.4% MoM in April, but calmed down to 0.2% in May, on trend with pre-war numbers. It’s up 2.9% YoY, but trending a bit lower.)
Together with the jobs numbers, it would be weird for an independent Fed to not at least hold rates steady.
All items: +0.5% monthly; +4.2% year-over-year.
Energy: +3.9% monthly; +23.5% year-over-year.
Gasoline: +7.0% monthly; +40.5% year-over-year.
Fuel oil: +58.9% year-over-year.
Electricity: +0.6% monthly; +5.9% year-over-year.
Utility natural gas: -0.5% monthly; +3.0% year-over-year.
Food overall: +0.2% monthly; +3.1% year-over-year.
Food at home / groceries: +0.1% monthly.
Food away from home / restaurants: +0.3% monthly.
Nonalcoholic beverages: +0.6% monthly.
Cereals and bakery products: +0.4% monthly.
Fruits and vegetables: +0.2% monthly.
Dairy: -0.6% monthly.
Meats, poultry, fish, and eggs: -0.2% monthly.
Core CPI / all items less food and energy: +0.2% monthly; +2.9% year-over-year.
Shelter overall: +0.3% monthly.
Rent: +0.4% monthly.
Owners’ equivalent rent: +0.3% monthly.
Lodging away from home: +0.4% monthly.
Communication: +1.3% monthly.
Airline fares: +2.7% monthly.
Personal care: +1.0% monthly.
Recreation: +0.3% monthly.
Apparel: +0.3% monthly.
Used cars and trucks: +0.1% monthly.
Medical care: +0.3% monthly.
Hospital services: +0.7% monthly.
Motor vehicle insurance: -1.7% monthly.
Household furnishings and operations: -0.6% monthly.
New vehicles: -0.3% monthly.
Prescription drugs: -0.9% monthly.
Steadily rising prices will be the norm from now on. What will be interesting to see is how fast the corporate elite figure they can boil the frogs without them noticing too much.
$50.00 hotdog is coming.
Receiving "market" compensation trumps real-world expenses, since the market for one's labor is a different market than the real-world expenses.
If you're at $5,000/month, a 4.2% raise puts you at $5,210. If you're spending $600/month on gas (not unreasonable for someone that drives an SUV and lives in the suburbs instead of in the urban core), you still come out behind.
This is the problem with people treat CPI as some word from the heavens...it is not. CPI is a highly constructed figure which conveniently includes/excludes things and is really more a floor of what the inflation is. Anyone living in the real world knows experienced inflation is way higher.
It’s an attempt at a central tendency in a complex economy with non-linear variability.
> Anyone living in the real world knows experienced inflation is way higher
Here is a map of wage changes across the U.S., 2024 to 2025 [1]. Lots of variance! If you’re on the West Coast, right now, you’re seeing above-CPI inflation. If you’re in the Northern Rockies, where I am, you’re seeing less.
[1] https://www.bls.gov/charts/county-employment-and-wages/perce...
Ah…inflation.
In high inflation countries you often get a revision every 2-3 months and you get a rise that is higher than the official inflation, as a result this solidifies the inflation and boosts the economy as everyone immediately buys whatever they can before it becomes more expensive. It's a vicious cycle.
Most of the average joe's money is spent on housing + food + energy these things are all way above the calculated """average""" inflation
> housing
This is actually the hardest to get right because it's the largest, and 2/3 of Americans own homes, so part of their costs are fixed.
On average, nationally. Look up your state or metropolitan-area CPI. Or better yet, track your actual expenses and project forward.
CPI and PCE are great national statistics. I’m saying if you’re acting on a sub-national scale, there are better figures, though none as good as the one you compile for yourself. (Feeding bills and statements into an LLM should be a way to do this. Though, to be clear, I don’t do this.)
The median earner with a standard deduction would need a ~4.7% raise to stay even...
"Inflation" is also increasingly distributed unevenly. The top 10% continues to make up a larger and larger portion of spending. It is entirely possible for ~4.2% inflation to be substantially higher (or lower) for the median household than the overall reported number.
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