Where are you seeing inflation?

Where are you noticing inflation the most?

I see it lots of places...but oddly not in others.    Obviously gasoline is the one everyone sees daily but theres lots of factors that go into that.  

Where I've seen inflation:

- Restaurants....Panera Bread bagel and coffee is up to $7 from $5 a year ago.  Pretty hard to get out of any fast casual lunch place for under $15 now.    Had a sub, chips, drink at Capriottis this week.   Almost $17.

- Bacon.   For some reason bacon prices have almost doubled from a yar ago.   $8/pack.   Weird because other pork products seem to be about the same.    You can still get it $5 pack at Costco - but you need to buy 4 packs in bulk.

- Subscriptions.   Pretty much all of them have raised prices.  Streaming services,  retail memberships

Where I'm not seeing it:

- Lots of basics at the Grocery store:  milk, eggs, bread, cheese.

- electronics and appliances

- hotels.   Maybe because we're just now starting to reopen.   I've stayed at several LaQintas in recent months for the same or even less than a year ago

I'm seeing it in restaurants, definitely--and I don't buy the argument that inflation is the cause of ALL these price hikes. Increases have ranged from 20-40%, and no way have their costs gone up that much. Fast food places have generally imposed smaller increases than regular restaurants. And even that has varied--Wendy's, for example, hasn't increased prices at all, except for a couple of items. and McDonald's is up 5% or 10%. Other chains are showing +20%.

Since the current high inflation is 7.5% annualized and has been going on for less than a year, there's no justification for any price increases larger than that. Businesses are taking advantage. Just like in Vegas, they're trying to make up for two bad years with six months' worth of price gouging.

Three grocery stores comparison: Trader Joe's is up about 20%, and I have a direct comparison here because I generally buy the same stuff every week and my bill has been $60 when it was always $50. Safeway's prices are also up 20%. Grocery Outlet has mostly been holding the line--not very many price increases--but the availability of stuff has plummeted, and their specials are now, frankly, pathetic.

My rent was just jacked up 9% "due to rising costs," which is bullshit because the complex has one part-time manager and one maintenance guy, and whatever pay raise they may have gotten, a collective $12,000 monthly increase in the rent (for the entire complex) isn't remotely needed to cover that.

Gas here isn't that bad. It was always about $3.29 during the pandemic (except for that one bizarre period in March 2020), and now, it's $3.69. Each of those prices are at the cheapest stations locally.

Tiresomely, we'll get a Tommie-poo rant about Biden on this thread, but if there's one thing that all this variation illustrates, it's that consumer pricing is the sum total of literally billions of individual decisions, and the government has very, very little influence--positive or negative--on it. I really wish people would realize that bitching about inflation is like going outside and shaking your fist at the weather. Tommie-poo's brain is like stale cottage cheese, so there's no hope for him. But maybe the electorate will understand and not rush into the arms of the RepubliQ with their empty promises.

You think pumping tons of unneeded $ into the system for U/C and stimulus had anything to do with this inflation?  

Your mom should definitely not be jacking up your rent 9%.  That is awful.  

Except that "pumping tons of unneeded $ into the system" never happened. Millions of people used that money to survive.

We of course can't use a time machine and see what would have happened without the pandemic relief measures, but it's a certainty that a LOT of people would have been badly hurt. In particular, millions of small businesses would have gone under, taking tens of millions of jobs with them.

That those businesses survived and are now booming is one major force driving the current inflation. But if you want to be disingenuous, intellectually dishonest, and hypocritical, you can bleat endlessly about the latter while ignoring the former.

My mother is dead, asshole. Don't say gratuitous nonsense just for the purpose of being a dick.

For those of you complaining about restaurants, I just quit going to big brand restaurants and fast food chains. At two of the local mom and pops a sandwich, fries and drink ring in at about $7.75.  A Mexican place I frequent has everything on their lunch menu for $7.50 including drink. All of those are table service too.  Since I cut the chain restaurants and fast food out, I am spending less dining out than I was a year ago.

1) We should have never shut down for 6 weeks.  It didn't solve a damn thing like I was saying back then.  And that proved to be right of course now as the pandemic has ranged on for two years after.  It did nothing but create a big handout that the libs wanted so badly and always want.  

2) Millions of people got stimulus that didn't need it.

3) Thousands of people milked U/C and there was a TON of fraud in most states with it too.  

4) PPP was received by thousands of businesses that had no business asking for it.  

All that was a shit ton of $ dumped into the economy that didn't need it and fed into the inflation we are seeing now.  

When the money supply increases as dramatically as it has recently, inflation is the result. 

Inflation was the desired result from the FED after since 2008 when the biggest fear was a deflationary spiral.   

Yes, you can point to legislation that printed dollars......

- COVID releif under both Trump and Biden

- 20 years of unbudgeted wars 

- massive tax giveaways to corporations and the wealthiest people

And there's the FED who has been printing trillions  to buy bonds - both government and corporate - since the 2008 crash.   And there's the supply chain issues.   

I'm happy to debate to all of the money prinitng legislation from the last decade and who sponcered it..... 

But the question of this thread is - where are you seeing inflation?

I would agree with 2,3 and 4.      Enter David MIller and Tom.

We also have printed 50 billion subsidizing soybean farmers.    And many more billions occupying foreign lands.

1) The shutdown was imposed during a period when we didn't know how to treat the disease. A LOT MORE people would have died if we hadn't locked everything down to give our medical facilities and workers a break. As it was, they were almost overwhelmed, but held on--barely. A FREEDUMB approach would have stretched the medical system to the breaking point.

2) Who was going to decide whether people got the stimulus or not? YOU??? LOL, LOL, LOL, as they say.

3) Likewise, who was going to decide whether someone "deserved" unemployment compensation?

4) Or whether a business "deserved" pandemic-related assistance?

Jerry, you make two unfounded assumptions here. Allow me to school you:

a) In the first place, it's almost impossible to determine who should be "worthy" of assistance and who should not. But let's say that the stimulus or UI money went to someone who didn't need it. What were they going to do with that money? Spend it. That kept businesses afloat and enabled them to go on paying their employees. Yeah, I know, that was a terrible terrible thing.

b) During that time, people, kept away from experiences such as travel and entertainment, sought to buy durable goods instead. Now, that money is disproportionately chasing the abovementioned experiences and "soft," or perishable, goods. And those expeditures are much more subject to inflation than "hard" goods, because of greater elasticity of demand. To put it simply, people generally don't buy two washing machines, or refrain from buying one altogether, even if the price of a washing machine changes drastically. But people will buy a LOT more pizza, airline flights, shoes, etc. when times are good. Right now, because of the skewed nature of buying and availability in 2020-2021, that money you decry is chasing primarily "soft" goods. Where you go off the rails is in assuming that it wouldn't be happening without the pandemic assistance money. Wrong! It was inevitable regardless, once the pandemic eased.

You're a wee bit too intelligent to buy into the standard conservitard shibboleth that money given to those who don't "deserve" it is somehow wasted, that those undeserving scumbags set fire to it or something. The reality is that that money gets spent, and that it turn benefits everyone. Conservitards are always outraged when people they don't like (i.e., everyone who isn't a conservitard) get money from the government, but the truth is that everyone benefits.

If you doubt all this, do a little reading on the economic multiplier effect.