On the plus side so is energy costs

i got bad news about health insurance costs…

Tariffs are just starting to work their way inoto consumer prices now.

We don’t have accurate data for most of 2025. The second half of 2024 was much better than the first half of 2024 which is really helping those year long moving averages, but the monthly inflation numbers have been increasing recently so it’s far to early to say what 2024 vs 2025 will actually look like.

Its obviously not dead until you kill reddit, timblr, etc.

Yeah no, economists and a lot of people understand the the causes of inflation. There are economists who are paid very well to not understand it though, and such positions are often high in the government and financial sector hierarchies.

The money goes faster on the top side of the wing, which means the money underneath the wing is more compressed, lifting up both sides of the wing. This is known as the "trickle-down" theory of lift.

It's more complicated than that (lending also increases the money supply) though you're right that "printing money" loosely speaking is the primary irreversible driver.

We've had a dozen instances of massive money printing since the 80s but no significant inflation until we had the COVID supply side shock. Now we're getting inflation because of tariff uncertainty, also a supply side shock.

Friedman is wrong, inflation is primarily caused by supply side shocks.

Politicians love communicating about 2nd and 3rd derivatives of prices and debt in ways that even mathematically literate people have trouble immediately interpreting. There's a famous quote about Nixon doing it but it's honestly the current standard mode from all sides trying to avoid blame for the state of the deficit and monetary supply.

Why would it be impossible to research it's cause in a specific context?

You are not offering an argument about why can't it be investigated.

Yeah, I’ve just never really liked the carry costs of a house… taxes, maintenance, utilities, transaction costs, etc. and never wanted to deal with being a landlord.

Plus, while the real estate market on a whole might go up, I have a hunch the chances of one individual house appreciating are more varied than the chances of one of the big tech stocks appreciating… as they are the market at this point.

Edit to add: I think for the average American, real estate is the only plausible way to invest on margin, as you’ll never get 5:1 leverage at your brokerage, if you even have a brokerage.

That's because the median person qualifies for a vastly larger mortgage than margin limit.

Margin trading is for the already-wealthy. You can get a home with near-zero assets.

RCV also has the advantage of being relatively understandable for the layperson unlike some of the more esoteric ones I’ve seen

> Third parties are nonviable in most of the US due to our voting system.

Third parties are nonviable because they have practically no money for campaigns and practically no free news media coverage either.

The most viable third party Presidential candidate in recent history was Ross Perot. Why? Because he was a billionaire who could afford to buy his own TV campaign infomercials. (Also note that Minnesota Governor Jesse Ventura came out of Ross Perot's Reform Party.)

The issue isn't the voting system but rather the campaign finance system.

The media are complicit in the political duopoly. They could give equal coverage to third parties. They could invite third parties to debates. This would both increase the polling of third parties and also increase their fundraising. Instead, it's pay to play.