[arcticbull]

And yet you and everyone else are unable to produce any meaningful sources or analysis that justify your beliefs. [citation needed] and we can talk about it.

Healthcare is a social policy matter, not monetary policy, and nothing to do with increase in the money supply. You take that up with your representatives not the Fed.

Housing is a function of city council zoning policy. You take that up with your city council not the Fed, or with the federal government it you want Japanese style zoning rules. [1]

Childcare is social policy, not monetary policy, and you take that up with your representatives not the Fed.

You can't just point to anything you don't like and say the Fed Did It or is responsible for it. All they do is control the money supply. Nothing more.

A reduction in your welfare isn't inflation. Necessities can outpace inflation. It's bad social policy, but it happens. What you fail to understand is that these prices will continue to outstrip a platonic ideal even if denominated in Bitcoin because the increase in pricing has nothing to do with monetary policy. Any temporary reprieve is due to speculative mania.

[1] http://urbankchoze.blogspot.com/2014/04/japanese-zoning.html

[danhak]

> Housing is a function of city council zoning policy...

This is the laughably reductionist take that predictably appears on HN when folks think the dynamics of San Francisco apply everywhere.

Housing costs have nothing to do with the Fed? Really? You don’t believe record low mortgage rates are driving demand at all?

Nah, it must be city council zoning policy that is sending home prices soaring all over the country—-even in rural and unincorporated areas.

[arcticbull]

I'm sorry you're just wrong about that though.

On average, the price per square foot of housing in the US is exactly the same now as it was in the 1970s, on an inflation adjusted basis. [1] In major metros, that number is higher, because of city policy, but on average, the number is flat. That means on an inflation adjusted basis in rural areas houses are cheaper per square foot.

Once you take into account that interest rates are about 1/5th of what they were back then, it's clear, housing is actually more affordable now than it ever was (per square foot).

Yes, zoning matters in rural areas. Minimum size rules, minimum setback rules -- all sorts of code changes -- have conspired alongside the 20% decrease in average family size and the changing tastes for more space, to make houses twice as big. Same price per square foot -- or lower! -- Twice as big. Twice as expensive.

I was wrong to say it has "nothing" to do with it, but it is by far not the dominant force as evidenced by the numbers.

If you're unhappy about poor folks not being able to afford the houses that's again social policy not monetary policy. I am too. But inflation isn't why.

By all means have at those windmills though, and please, cite your sources so we can have a debate on facts.

[edit] You're missing my point. Pricing in metros is more expensive because of council policy. Pricing outside the city is higher because they're twice as big. End of story. Please CITE YOUR SOURCES. This. Is. Not. Inflation.

You having a worse quality of life is not inflation.

Yes, white flight may or may not contribute to it. That's not Fed policy. That's social policy. And that's my point.

[1] https://fee.org/articles/new-homes-today-have-twice-the-squa...

[imcoconut]

You're not necessarily wrong that the causes of the increases in prices for things like healthcare, etc. are due to policy issues, among other things. But you can kind of make that argument for any good or service - that that the increase in the price of x is a "specific industry/policy issue" and not a "monetary issue".

That doesn't negate the fact that people are still paying higher prices. If the fed is mandated with controlling the increase in prices then it is still upon them to address it, no? The fact that monetary policy is not a primary cause of the good/service specific inflation is irrelevant.

[arcticbull]

> That doesn't negate the fact that people are still paying higher prices. If the fed is mandated with controlling the increase in prices then it is still upon them to address it, no? The fact that monetary policy is not a primary cause of the good/service specific inflation is irrelevant.

If 'everything is going up the same amount' then sure. If one particular contributor makes an outsized move in the wrong direction what's the fed to do? Fire up the printer at the cost of all of the other areas of life that aren't going up?

Healthcare contributes to inflation, sure, but if government passes a 50% tax on all healthcare procedures overnight, that's not the Fed's job to rectify. It's not their job to fight Congress on how relatively expensive certain things are. If the government decides healthcare should only be for the rich (...er) then it's not the Fed's job to change that.

They would account for what the newly more expensive healthcare cost does to inflation as a whole, and increase or decrease the money supply to match.

Their job is systemic, not targeted. Want cheaper healthcare? Talk to congress, not Janet Yellen.

[imtringued]

>Housing costs have nothing to do with the Fed? Really? You don’t believe record low mortgage rates are driving demand at all?

Imagine if you are a bathroom remodeling company and people are building new bathrooms for $5k. You can build a bathroom for $4K. Suddenly the fed is loosening its monetary policy and people are building bathrooms like crazy with their bathroom mortgages. They are willing to pay $10k per bathroom but your costs didn't change. It's now extremely profitable to build bathrooms and that's exactly what you are going to do. You're going to hire lots of workers so that everyone can get their bathrooms. Turns out, a competitor does the exact same thing but they sell their bathrooms for $9k. Add more competitors and the price will be very close to the cost of construction.

Now replace the bathroom with the entire house. Suddenly you realize something. It's very difficult to find land to build your new house and even if you did you would have to upzone the property by tearing an existing property down and building a 2-3 story multifamily home there. Unfortunately, doing this is illegal in many places and where it is legal permits are being denied for arbitrary reasons.

You can't tell me that construction companies can't make money off new construction because the cost of housing is too low.

[SpicyLemonZest]

Rural and unincorporated areas have strict zoning too. Look at Tuolomne county (https://www.arcgis.com/apps/webappviewer/index.html?id=3e926...) for an example I could easily find a graphic for. The vast majority of privately-held land in the county is zoned RR (brown, 1 unit per 5 acres), AG (1 unit per 18.5 acres), or TPZ (1 unit per 37 acres).

[chordalkeyboard]

> the increase in pricing has nothing to do with monetary policy.

This is incorrect.

[arcticbull]

Inflation adjusted $/sqft on average across the US housing costs exactly the same as it did in the 1970s. With interest rates 1/5 of what they were back then, each square foot is actually much more affordable.

I admit I misspoke, because of course, monetary policy controls interest rates, but I maintain that a change in affordability is not dominated by inflation but rather other social policies. Houses are twice is big and families are 20% smaller.

Happy to debate more but [citation needed].

[1] https://fee.org/articles/new-homes-today-have-twice-the-squa...

[chordalkeyboard]

> Inflation adjusted $/sqft on average across the US housing costs exactly the same as it did in the 1970s.

> Inflation adjusted

Inflation is a result of monetary policy. So when you’ve adjusted the price for the monetary policy, you see that 50 years of capital accumulation and efficiency has been soaked up by monetary policy.

> I admit I misspoke, because of course, monetary policy controls interest rates, but I maintain that a change in affordability is not dominated by inflation but rather other social policies. Houses are twice is big and families are 20% smaller.

Things are supposed to get cheaper as capital accumulates. Social policies undoubtedly have an effect. So does increasing the money supply. An increase in the number of currency units necessarily causes each unit to be worth less, ceteris paribus.

> Happy to debate more but [citation needed].

I’m not sure how to proceed. The notion that one could print money and have each currency unit correspond to the same amount of physical goods is prima facie false.

[arcticbull]

> "I’m not sure how to proceed. The notion that one could print money and have each currency unit correspond to the same amount of physical goods is prima facie false."

No, it's not, you're looking at half the equation. Value of money is a function of both supply and velocity. If velocity drops but supply increases commensurately, each unit of currency corresponds to the same amount of physical goods. [1]

This should be dead obvious to you, as the money supply doubled last year but the price of Apples went up 2%. Not 100%. Same with the entire CPI basket. Housing actually got cheaper. Rent went down a ton.

> Inflation is a result of monetary policy. So when you’ve adjusted the price for the monetary policy, you see that 50 years of capital accumulation and efficiency has been soaked up by monetary policy.

We are talking in constant dollars that have a 0% notional rate of inflation. That's what inflation-adjusted means in this context.

What do you mean by "50 years of capital accumulation"? People don't accumulate or hold dollars for exactly this reason. They accumulate and hold assets and value, whose performance matches or exceeds inflation.

> Things are supposed to get cheaper as capital accumulates. Social policies undoubtedly have an effect. So does increasing the money supply. An increase in the number of currency units necessarily causes each unit to be worth less, ceteris paribus.

I'm not sure what that means. Things aren't supposed to get anything as capital accumulates.

An increase in number of currency units may or may not cause each unit to be worth less, as velocity is the missing half of the equation. With that in mind the goal is each unit to be worth 2% less each year, to incentivize higher velocity of money and investment.

It's a straw man to say that your buying power drops 2% each year as a result of inflation. You're only penalized for inflation for the period between you receiving the dollars and using them to purchase assets whose performance exceeds inflation.

[1] https://www.investopedia.com/terms/v/velocity.asp

[chordalkeyboard]

> No, it's not, you're looking at half the equation. Value of money is a function of both supply and velocity. If velocity drops but supply increases commensurately, each unit of currency corresponds to the same amount of physical goods. [1]

for consumer goods, “velocity” is the rate at which those goods are consumed. People aren’t generally choosing to starve themselves or pay rent on 4 apartments according to economic conditions.

i should have included “ceteris paribus” with my statement but I thought it was obviously implied.

> This should be dead obvious to you, as the money supply doubled last year but the price of Apples went up 2%. Not 100%. Same with the entire CPI basket. Housing actually got cheaper. Rent went down a ton.

Ceteris is not paribus. The increase in money supply soaked up all the decrease in prices people ‘should’ have experienced.

> We are talking in constant dollars that have a 0% notional rate of inflation. That's what inflation-adjusted means in this context.

I understand what “inflation-adjusted” means. Once you adjust for the price increase due to people’s dollars being worth less, the commodity costs the same. Of course people aren’t paying in notional inflation-adjusted dollars, they are paying in the actual dollars that have depreciated, so they end up paying more for less, because of monetary policy. The value they miss out on accrues to people who get the new money earlier.

> What do you mean by "50 years of capital accumulation"?

I mean that the capital stock of the economy has increased over the past 50 years as a result of people investing their surplus in capital goods. This results in increased productivity and (ceteris paribus) a lower real cost of goods and services.

> People don't accumulate or hold dollars for exactly this reason. They accumulate and hold assets and value, whose performance matches or exceeds inflation.

Yes, because monetary policy results in depreciation of fiat currency.

> I'm not sure what that means. Things aren't supposed to get anything as capital accumulates.

Things are supposed to get cheaper as capital accumulates because labor is more efficient when combined with tools, resulting in more outputs and the subsequent decrease in real price.

> An increase in number of currency units may or may not cause each unit to be worth less, as velocity is the missing half of the equation.

You’re missing the part where I said “ceteris paribus”, a commonly specified requirement for assertions about the connection between theory and economic reality.

> It's a straw man to say that your buying power drops 2% each year as a result of inflation. You're only penalized for inflation for the period between you receiving the dollars and using them to purchase assets whose performance exceeds inflation.

It’s not a strawman, its literally the case.

Additionally this requirement to invest dollars before they depreciate leads to asset prices skyrocketing without support from the underlying fundamentals. This leads to people who are already invested (the rich, the wealthy, the established old money, the upper class) gaining disproportionately, and new investors being priced out. Hence monetary policy is directly responsible for the rich getting richer and the poor being left behind.

[imtringued]

>I’m not sure how to proceed. The notion that one could print money and have each currency unit correspond to the same amount of physical goods is prima facie false.

The entire problem is that it's not false at all. There are various ways to produce more physical goods without employing more domestic workers. Every time the fed is printing money that money gets invested in a way that does not result in decreased unemployment. It's being used to produce more physical goods which keeps the price of physical goods constant.

Ultimately the only truly scarce "good" is labor. Everything derives from it. If prices are not rising that means labor is not scare at all, which is idiotic because there are lots of ways to productively deploy that labor.

[chordalkeyboard]

> The entire problem is that it's not false at all. There are various ways to produce more physical goods without employing more domestic workers. Every time the fed is printing money that money gets invested in a way that does not result in decreased unemployment. It's being used to produce more physical goods which keeps the price of physical goods constant.

I was unclear and I should have included ceteris paribus, but you’re correct. The fed keeps the price of goods constant when it should be decreasing.

> Ultimately the only truly scarce "good" is labor. Everything derives from it. If prices are not rising that means labor is not scare at all, which is idiotic because there are lots of ways to productively deploy that labor.

Raw materials are also truly scarce, and you’ve neglected to apply the same level of analysis here as you did above.