I keep my receipts.
From what I can tell, inflation regarding food prices is greater than 10% year over year for the things I purchase comparing two receipts in front of me, both from the same grocery store, one from the last time I bought groceries and the other from a year ago to the nearest week(to account for seasonal price differences). About every second time I go to the grocery store, I do see price increases in at least two or three of the things I buy on a regular basis, and I almost never see price declines in any of them on a YoY basis.
I purchase unprocessed or minimally processed foods and spices in their base forms, with minimal or no packaging, and prices have consistently been climbing far in excess of what the CPI claims they are, by at least a factor of 5. As far as I know, a pint of blueberries is still a pint of blueberries($1.39 last week versus $1.19 last year), a pineapple is still a pineapple($1.59 last week versus $1.29 last year), a bundle of cilantro is still a bundle of cilantro($0.89 last week versus $0.79 last year), and a bag of frozen green beans is still a bag of frozen greenbeans($0.99 last week versus $0.89 last year). This trend has occurred for everything I buy, nothing has escaped the price increase, and they've been each of similarly large percentages(10-25% price increase). Try a "substitution" around that one...
...and just because Alan Greenspan claims hamburger is steak, does not make it so...
You know what doesn't go up 10%+ on an annualized basis? My wages from the job I'm working at.
Comparing the amount of hours required to work at both minimum wage and median wage to buy like for like items is IMO a much better way to gauge the real inflation rate. It cuts through all of the adjustments, substitutions, debt availability, and obfuscations inherent in otherwise constantly changing markets and metrics. By this metric, Americans are paid 1/2 to 1/3 as much as they were 50 years ago. We now need twice as many hours worked at the median wage to support a family at a basic bare-bones 1970 level of living standard without luxuries and frivolities(just the basics, food, shelter, utilities, healthcare) versus what it would have taken in 1970.
By the metric of hours of work required at median wage to afford the basics, the average American's living standard is rapidly slipping, The CPI can claim low inflation all it wants, but Americans continue to feel as they are falling further and further behind. I don't think it's their collective imaginations playing tricks on them, even though they will spend many hours a day staring at those shiny new glowing rectangles that didn't exist in 1970 to distract themselves from reality while pundits tell them how great things are...
evilgenius wrote:Unless there are forces driving up prices as a whole, across all substitutionary products, then the type of pressure theses inflation hawks talk about doesn't exist.
Those forces driving up prices include but are not limited to:
-fiat money that is not backed by anything tangible
-modern monetary theory
-central banks
-increasing debt burdens used in substitution for cash
The unnecessary felling of a tree, perhaps the old growth of centuries, seems to me a crime little short of murder. ~Thomas Jefferson