[gen220]

When people are talking about inflation, what inflation statistic are they referring to? CPI has been below 3% since May 2024.

Precious metals (silver, gold, platinum, palladium) have out-paced Bitcoin.

USD:EUR hasn't gotten worse than 5-year lows, same with USD:GBP.

I don't think these statistics support "money is fleeing the U.S." or "tariffs are causing runaway inflation", unless I'm missing something? You could paint it as "wealthy people are hedging against globalized recession / future break-downs in trade", maybe, but then why are precious metals out-performing bitcoin?

If anything this feels like "momentum"-driven speculation, similar to what we're seeing with some of the biggest companies in the S&P500, and similar to what we saw in late-2020, where the numbers are front-running a plausible but as-of-yet-unrealized narrative.

What indicators that people are finding useful to make sense of this?

[mikewarot]

Grocery prices, utility bills, gas prices, insurance premiums, property taxes or rents all are part of the real coat of living.

The political fairy tale that is the CPI stays low to avoid having to increase government payments for social security and the like.

[panarky]

When my mom and dad bought their home 50 years ago, they took out a mortgage to buy a home. My dad was a "light equipment operator" with the county road department. My dad's paycheck was their only income. They paid off the mortgage in 12 years on his salary alone, while raising three kids.

Today, the county road department still has a "light equipment operator" job and it pays about $52,000 per year. The house they bought 50 years ago is now worth $940k.

There's no way a couple with a single income of a "light equipment operator" could afford that house today.

In fact, even a light equipment operator's boss, the foreman/supervisor couldn't afford that home on today's wages. Maybe a light equipment operator's boss's boss, the a "superintendent of public works" would have enough income to afford the house that 50 years ago a light equipment operator was able to afford.

It really shows how an increasing percentage of the value of a worker's labor has been systematically extracted and transferred from workers to owners.

[gen220]

I agree with you that these have all risen in cost. All of those (excluding property tax) are included in CPI.

What inflation metric, in your opinion, accurately captures those costs?

To clarify, the CPI story is this: we had a period of high-inflation during COVID/the war in Ukraine and our recovery from COVID / reorganization of energy supply chain away from Russia. Now, we're back to normal-pace inflation. Since prices are a one-way ratchet, we're stuck on a new+higher plateau, but we're not still going up at the rate we were in 2021-2022.

Is there an inflation metric that contradicts this narrative?