[AftHurrahWinch]

This is what the prelude to stagflation looks like - no job growth, yet prices rising.

If the administration pressures the Federal Reserve into lowering interest rates, say, right before November 2026, then we lock in a stagflationary cycle. An initial stock rally then long-term bond yields rising on inflation fears. A weakening U.S. dollar, and a Federal Reserve that has no tools to fight inflation in the medium-term.

[lesuorac]

Federal Reserve has no real tools to fight inflation. They can get the buckets out and start bailing but until somebody plugs the whole in the deficit there's a structural problem with the boat.

People love to bring up the gold chart and be like "what happened in the 1970s!". It wasn't ending the gold standard that was the problem. It was the endless deficit spending; if you want to get a handle on inflation you need current demand to match current production.

[mothballed]

The federal reserve buys deficit creating treasury securities, with newly created unbacked money. It's hard to separate deficit spending from the federal reserve and unbacked currency.

[gruez]

That might be true during the pandemic but it's been over for years now. The fed is moving in the opposite direction, selling bonds it previously bought.

https://www.federalreserve.gov/monetarypolicy/bst_recenttren...

[mothballed]

Good point; fed also creates buyers of treasury securities, including ones it holds, through inflationary policies that pressure dollar holders further in the direction of buying inflation tracking assets (which the government is happy to swoop in and offer the ~most stable one -- allowing them to satisfy the market they create.)

[gruez]

>through inflationary policies that pressure dollar holders further in the direction of buying inflation tracking assets.

Is this actually true? It might make sense at a surface level, but if you think a few steps further, you'd realize that that the price of "inflation tracking assets" (TIPS?) would eventually incorporate whatever inflation expectations that the market expects, thereby neutralizing any advantages it might have. Moreover there are deep markets for interest rate swaps/futures, so there's little need to pile into TIPS directly.

[mothballed]

High inflation pressures a near time preference in discharging USD.

Also "inflation tracking" I should have written more as "inflation hedging" -- needn't be TIPS exactly.

Higher inflation raises the cost of not buying treasury and other asset classes. You're right that there may not much change in the general preference in treasuries vs other non-USD asset classes, but it makes all inflation hedging boats rise.

This should be obvious if you simplify the market to just USD and say bonds -- at 0% inflation the opportunity cost of not buying bonds is just the real bonds rate, whereas at 10% inflation the opportunity cost is going to approximate closer to 10+real rate. In the latter the pressure to buy bonds would be much higher. ( Of course Fed can buy treasuries with essentially money created from thin air so the opportunity cost analogy may break down for securities first purchased by the fed, which could spoil the presumption that treasury sales proportion of inflation hedging assets might not change much)

[wakawaka28]

>People love to bring up the gold chart and be like "what happened in the 1970s!". It wasn't ending the gold standard that was the problem. It was the endless deficit spending; if you want to get a handle on inflation you need current demand to match current production.

The deficit spending is the reason why we had to leave the gold standard. France, for example, sent a battleship to NYC to retrieve their gold. The US government realized that they could not give out gold for all the dollars that they spent, and went into default on that obligation. The gold standard could have kept the government honest. But they were given too much slack and they abused it to the point of having to break promises officially.

The Fed cannot actually destroy all the money that they created. But they could start by not printing any more. They won't do that but they theoretically could.

[gruez]

>Federal Reserve has no real tools to fight inflation.

Yes, interest rates?

[wakawaka28]

If they let interest rates go high, the government will go bankrupt along with many companies and individuals. We can't afford 20% base rates anymore. The economy is not healthy enough for that. At least I don't think anyone is ready for the shitstorm that would unleash...

[downrightmike]

They need inflation, it lowers the old debt burden because it is cheaper to service.

[wakawaka28]

No, they don't. If the debt cannot be afforded, they should default. Start by balancing the budget. This inflation will probably ruin us. Kicking the can down the road makes the reckoning worse. It's not fixing shit, and it is causing way more problems.

[downrightmike]

Logically, sure, but Japan has been our aspirational model since things went sideways in 2020. Illogically, even the UK is paying back interest on the South Sea company from 400 years ago. Debt isn't going anywhere even after everyone who accrued it is long dead and dust.

[ThinkBeat]

The traditional way a central bank fights inflation, and take Norway as an example.

The central bank raises interest rates, until there are enough bankrupcies and unemployment rate reaches a high enough level, The economy cools down.

The nation has low inflation again.

Rinse out and repeat.

They do the direct opposite of bailing anyone out.

Now the US is different. The Biden administration decided that the best way to fight inflation was to invent a giant pile og money and hand it out.

Which heats up the economy and should raise inflation .

[TimorousBestie]

> Now the US is different. The Biden administration decided that the best way to fight inflation was to invent a giant pile og money and hand it out.

Biden did not invent quantitative easing.

[smileysteve]

Indeed, it was expanded greatly during the admins of Bush and Trump.

[arunabha]

> The Biden administration decided that the best way to fight inflation was to invent a giant pile og money and hand it out

Can you provide some references for your claim? IIRC, under Biden, inflation was stoked by the Covid stimulus(arguably necessary to avoid rapid deflation due to Covid, but probably kept for too long) and the Fed moved pretty decisively in the second half of the Biden presidency to raise interest rates rapidly to combat inflation. FWIW, the inflation issue seemed to be under control and heading in the right direction before the administration changed.

[ThinkBeat]

Ever hear about: Inflation Reduction Act¹

It authorised $891 billion in total spending – including $783 billion on energy and climate change, and three years of Affordable Care Act subsidies

in order to...... Reduce Inflation.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inflation_Reduction_Act

[dgfitz]

> IIRC, under Biden, inflation was stoked by the Covid stimulus(arguably necessary to avoid rapid deflation due to Covid, but probably kept for too long)

I think you answered your own question.

[walls]

Do you know who was president in March 2020, when that happened? I'll give you a hint: he put his own name on the checks.

[TimorousBestie]

Regrettably, everyone more or less memory-holed this. Biden is held responsible for all the bad things that happened because of COVID, and Trump escapes any blame whatsoever despite, yknow, advocating for bleach injections or whatever that was.

[dgfitz]

The quote I quoted said, quite literally, “under Biden” I offered no new information

[serioussecurity]

I'm sorry you're blaming the Biden admin for a bush era policy why?

[BizarroLand]

I think we're already in stagflation but no one wants to be the person who calls it.

Even Arizona Iced Tea had to come off their $0.99 price tag.

Everyone in America is hard-pressed to find anything for sale for at or under $1.00

Minimum wage is still federally $7.25.

How much worse does it actually have to get to be official stagflation?

[nerdsniper]

Candy bars generally seem to be >$2.00 everywhere I look. It blows my mind that minimum wage pays <30 candy bars per day.

[elevation]

How many people actually earn minimum wage?

In my low cost of living region you’d be hard-pressed to find any entry level positions (fast food, retail) below $15/hour. Panera (which needs staff at 4 or 5 AM to prep food for the day) are starting at $20/hour. Local restaurants and grocery stores can and do lose employees when a corporate chain raises their rates, so they have to keep up.

We could eliminate the federal minimum wage and very little would change.

[BizarroLand]

1.1% of workers earn federal minimum wage or less, roughly 900,000 people.

And only idiots think that removing the minimum wage will make things better, but they are idiots, so there's no helping them.

If you eliminated the federal minimum wage then many states would immediately remove it without a replacement and let their people starve to death in the gutters fighting with each other to get any income so that they didn't starve to death in the gutters while raking in the votes from the middle class business owners who are raking in the dough because they don't have to pay their employees any more.

If anything, we need to make the federal minimum wage not be a set minimum but instead it should change and vary based on the economic health of the city, state, and county that the worker works in, and it should be enough that any person who works a full time job earns enough money to afford 1/2 of a 2 bedroom apartment's average rent + food, insurance, car, gas, and fun.

That would give incentive to local businesses to keep their prices affordable because lower prices would mean lower wage costs and therefore more potential profit.

[elevation]

> federal minimum wage not be a set minimum but instead it should change and vary based on the economic health of the city, state, and county that the worker works in

You're right here -- we need a complex, multivariate analysis to determine fair wages across regions that accounts for average and personal economic health, transportation costs, food costs, housing costs, difficulty of the work, and even the prestige of the job and the mood of the worker.

This determination should be updated frequently, ideally in real time, so that the prevailing wages don't fall behind reality.

Even if this determination is governing the wages around you, you should always be allowed to negotiate something better for yourself.

When wages are finally determined correctly, then every worker should be able to say "this job benefits me more than any other opportunity available".

[baggy_trough]

Count me as an idiot, then. The minimum wage is a bad way to help the low skilled (it's actually bad for them because it makes it harder for them to find a job). Other safety net policies such as tax credits or direct subsidy would be much better.

[elevation]

> many states would immediately remove it without a replacement and let their people starve to death

The US distributes plenty of food to poor people. My neighbors on SNAP get significantly more fresh food than they can eat each week -- they just throw out about half of it. In the presence of social programs, changing the minimum wage will neither cause nor prevent starvation.

[gruez]

>I think we're already in stagflation but no one wants to be the person who calls it.

Most things you described is inflation, not stagflation. The point about the minimum wage is a red herring because virtually nobody gets paid the federal minimum wage. Moreover contrary to many people believe, inflation has not been outpacing wage growth in the US:

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LES1252881600Q

[Yoric]

I seem to recall that there are lots of criticism around the CPI these days, in part because it does not take into account debt. I don't remember the specifics, but I remember reading that if you do take debt into account, things look much worse.

[gruez]

>I seem to recall that there are lots of criticism around the CPI these days, in part because it does not take into account debt.

It's literally called consumer price index. Why would "debt" ever come into it? At best it's trying to move the goalposts from "prices are rising" to "consumers are worse off financially".

[Yoric]

I mean that I've read a few articles claiming that using CPI as the metric for inflation is plainly wrong. I'm not an economist, can't comment any further.

[helsinkiandrew]

Stagflation is inflation+low (or -ve) growth + higher unemployment.

If inflation (or some other shock) caused growth to head towards 0 with unemployment going above ~4% I believe economists would say it was a stagflation try period

[BizarroLand]

Stagflation is the simultaneous appearance in an economy of slow growth, high unemployment, and rising prices.

Thousands of people are getting laid off every week, prices are higher than they have ever been for most goods and services, and while unemployment is low, the number of jobs available per person looking for work is less than the number of people looking for work, the government is shut down for now, and there are promises/threats of more jobs and positions being cut before it opens back up.

Really walking the razors edge here, lol.

[SoftTalker]

> Minimum wage is still federally $7.25

And a Big Mac meal at McDonald's is $8.00.

[bhk]

$11.79 in my neighborhood.

[SoftTalker]

LOL. I rarely eat there, just saw that $8.00 price advertised here maybe it's a special offer.

A couple of years ago my wife and I stopped there to get a meal on the road (there was really not much else to choose from) and when the total for the two of us was over $20 I actually did a double take and said "there must be some mistake, it's just two meals" but that was the cost. Haven't eaten there since.

[Spooky23]

Absolutely. In my area, the Chase ATMs are all issuing $100 bills. My credit union is spitting out $50s by default.

They’re ready.

[ghaff]

Are $100 bills really transactional currency in much of the US? I carry a few traveling internationally but I'd never count on being able to use one at a US convenience store and I'm guessing there would be some friction even at a chain store.

[Spooky23]

I transitioned to mostly cash. 50's are the new 20, 100's are the new 50. I rarely have an issue with a $100 bill, but I don't pay for a $3 cup of coffee with it either.

It's an annoyance similar to the people who like to whine and apply surcharges to credit card transactions.

[Baeocystin]

Here in California, at least, yes. The local ATMs give 100s and 50s, and only twenties if you are specifically drawing 20 or 40 bucks.

[ghaff]

That's probably an exception. I'd never depend on being able to use a $100 bill in general. In Massachusetts, I've actually had to do some chasing down of $100 bills as trip reserve money. Not sure I could get anything larger than a $20 from a major bank's ATM. But I guess we're an impoverished state.

[mothballed]

I've never had a restaurant turn down $100, especially if you tell them that's all you have.

Legal tender for all debts.

[gruez]

Not sure about you but in my area it's only true in the sense that new ATMs can dispense more bill types. They can also now dispense $5 and $10, where previously they only dispensed $20 and $50. I haven't seen any machines that only dispensed $20/$100, or $50/$100 for instance. The implication that they're preparing for some hyperinflationary event is therefore totally unfounded.

[jauntywundrkind]

I'm pretty freaked out that ATM limits around me have dropped and dropped what can be withdrawn.

I used to be able to withdraw at least $500, now in a single transaction I can only withdraw $200 max. Given that inflation has gone so far the opposite direction, it's wild to me to see such low low maximum withdrawals.

[mothballed]

$100 is the new $20. If I'm not buying $100 worth of goods it's hardly worth the gas to drive there.

Only time I pull out $20s is emergency money for gas station, since for whatever reason they won't take large bills.

[toomuchtodo]

> Even Arizona Iced Tea had to come off their $0.99 price tag.

Arizona Iced Tea price increases would be due to 50% aluminum tariffs.

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/08/10/business/arizon-iced-tea-... | https://archive.today/HOsps

> How much worse does it actually have to get to be official stagflation?

Steve Eisman: U.S. Consumers Are Collapsing: Cars, Credit, & the Chaos Ahead [video] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45492807 - October 2025

* 69% of the US population are living paycheck to paycheck

* 25% of American consumers are using BNPL (buy now pay later) to pay for groceries

What breaks the camel's back? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[jandrewrogers]

> 69% of the US population are living paycheck to paycheck

Per the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, that is not out of any kind of financial necessity. It is a lifestyle choice.

[toomuchtodo]

Most [bottom 60% of U.S. households] Americans don't earn enough to afford basic costs of living, analysis finds - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44119317 - May 2025

Report: https://lisep.org/mql | https://cdn.prod.website-files.com/63ba0d84fe573c7513595d6e/...

> One commonly used (though also criticized) benchmark for housing affordability is that no more than 30% of household income should go toward housing costs. Households that spend more than that are considered “cost burdened” by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. By that standard, 31.3% of American households were cost burdened in 2023, including 27.1% of households with a mortgage and 49.7% of households that rent, according to 1-year estimates from the Census Bureau’s American Community Survey (ACS). (Many more people own than rent: In the second quarter of 2024, 65.6% of occupied housing units were owned while 34.4% were rented, according to the most recent estimates from the Census Bureau’s Current Population Survey/Housing Vacancy Survey.)

https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2024/10/25/a-look-at...

[jandrewrogers]

The bottom line is that BLS statistics, backed up by Federal Reserve studies, show that the median American household has >$1,000 per month in excess income after all ordinary expenses without regard for the necessity of the expenses in the “ordinary” category. In Federal Reserve studies that probed this more deeply, the truly “paycheck to paycheck” population in the sense that most people understand it was 10-15% of the population. That is still a substantial number of households but far below the misleading 69% figure thrown about.

Americans are flush with income at the median and spend it on unnecessary luxury goods, as is their right. There really isn’t a way to argue around this fact.

The households that are paycheck to paycheck outside their own choice is much, much smaller. Including well-off households in the same category does a disservice to poorer households.

[BizarroLand]

I don't believe people with the option of not living paycheck to paycheck would choose to do so given the opportunity.

That being said, I don't think the term, "lifestyle choice" effectively communicates the reasoning behind this lifestyle standard.

[fragmede]

I think there's a lack of financial education in a lot of cases. There are two axis, dumb with money vs smart with money, and rich and poor. These form four quadrants. There are people in each of those quadrants. It's the poor and dumb with money quadrant that's most painful to see. CalebHammer on YouTube helps people to see how their choices result in them drowning in debt.

[gruez]

Which specific statistic are you referring to?

[jandrewrogers]

The BLS maintains a model of “ordinary expenses”, which includes every category of expenditure that most American households spend money on. It isn’t based on necessity i.e. transportation is an “ordinary” expense and so buying an expensive BMW is considered “ordinary” under this model. The category of ordinary expenses is expansive.

The median US household has >$1,000 of income left over every month after all ordinary expenses per BLS. This has been the case for a long time. You can’t be living paycheck to paycheck in the sense of “having no money” if you can spend on luxury items in “necessary” categories and still have considerably money left over at the end of the month in the median case. That is the American reality.

Americans are astonishingly wealthy and they don’t even realize it.

[gruez]

I couldn't find any publications when searching for "bls ordinary expenses" and google's AI says you probably meant "Consumer Expenditure Surveys". However after looking at some of the data, I'm not sure it's as rosy as you make it out to be. For instance if you look at consumer expenditures by income[1], you see that the average across all consumer units is $87.9k of post-tax income against $77.3k of "average annual expenditures". That sounds okay until you look at some of the lower income groups. The $50k-69k group has $56.5k of post-tax income against $59.5k of expenses, which implies they're getting into debt to finance their lifestyle. That's true for every income group under $69k.

[1] https://www.bls.gov/cex/tables/calendar-year/mean-item-share...

[downrightmike]

It isn't the Fed's job to fight economic problems, Congress is responsible to do that. But Congress doesn't want to legislate where they need to. Yes stagflation is the best outcome in the current climate. I don't think we'll have it that good.

[rtkwe]

The Fed was created to do that work for Congress free of the short term pressures of needing to get reelected and to have people who are actually at least trained in economics making those decisions instead of a random grab bag of people able to win our popularity contest elections.

Congress is also still free to override the Fed and make their own programs or change the operation of the Fed too.

[it_is_I]

> But Congress doesn't want to legislate where they need to.

Everyone keeps saying this, but then go and re-elect the same do nothings.

[WorldMaker]

I think part of the current problem is that "everyone" elected a bunch of "do somethings" with what seems to be low collective civic education, way too many sledgehammers, and "new" economic ideas like retrying the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act near to its Centennial Anniversary (and to certain other related key anniversaries of the Great Depression).

[masfuerte]

Because if they didn't vote for a lizard, the wrong lizard might get in.

[wakawaka28]

Prelude? Have you been asleep for the past 5 years, or 20? We've had plenty of inflation with little/no real growth. Number goes up but jobs/salaries/domestic production goes down. Government consumption goes up year after year.

[klooney]

Although the labor supply is also contracting, which makes reasoning about job growth weird

[AftHurrahWinch]

Is the BLS reported labor supply contracting?

[danaris]

The BLS head got fired after delivering a report that Trump didn't like.

I wouldn't count on being able to trust whatever they do, or don't, report for the time being.

[NomDePlum]

Is this not Trumps fiscal policy? These are the conditions the US administration is trying to create are they not?