American Economics Thread

[manqiangrexue]

A 7% inflation rate means aggregate price levels in 2020 should’ve been double what they were in 2010. Someone needs to identify a single price that doubled in the decade.

Why do you do this to yourself? Picking out single items that have doubled in a decade actually don't prove anything but you issue such easy and stupid challenges. Shows how you have a poor grasp on the type of data needed to prove something.

Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!

"According to the website, in the span of just 10 years, some cult-classic menu items like the McDouble sandwich from McDonald's have increased in price by as much as 168%. (All of a sudden that $18 Big Mac meal doesn't seem as shocking.) Similarly, the restaurant's 10-piece McNugget meal has increased by 83% while an order of medium fries has increased by 138%."

Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!

"The

Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!

, from $166,200 in 2011 to $353,600 in 2021."

 

[chgough34]

Why do you do this to yourself? Picking out single items that have doubled in a decade actually don't prove anything but you issue such easy and stupid challenges. Shows how you have a poor grasp on the type of data needed to prove something.

Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!

"According to the website, in the span of just 10 years, some cult-classic menu items like the McDouble sandwich from McDonald's have increased in price by as much as 168%. (All of a sudden that $18 Big Mac meal doesn't seem as shocking.) Similarly, the restaurant's 10-piece McNugget meal has increased by 83% while an order of medium fries has increased by 138%."

Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!

"The

Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!

, from $166,200 in 2011 to $353,600 in 2021."

Was debunking ShadowStats and you’ve done it for me. They reported 7% inflation between 2010-2020 so aggregate price levels should’ve doubled in that period. Meanwhile, you bring evidence of a Big Mac from 2014-2024 (out of sample) has increased by 168% (not quite doubling even when your time frame includes years of very high inflation) and of the median price of a single family home which has both doubled in price and gotten larger (so the actual inflation component is less than half). Inflation is the general increase in prices for the same goods and services but if houses are increasing in size, you are buying more house. That is not inflation. That is more. And what’s more - the Newsweek article restricts itself to 70 metro areas (so it selects for where inflation was the highest). To summarize: when you select on high inflation metros, you get that one of the highest inflation products (housing) has less than an annualized 7% inflation rate from 2010-2020. ShadowStats is wrong

ShadowStats is simply wrong about previous and current U.S. inflation. Simple as that.

 

[chgough34]

Very large semiconductor investment by Samsung in Texas

Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!

 

[zbb]

Was debunking ShadowStats and you’ve done it for me. They reported 7% inflation between 2010-2020 so aggregate price levels should’ve doubled in that period. Meanwhile, you bring evidence of a Big Mac from 2014-2024 (out of sample) has increased by 168% (not quite doubling even when your time frame includes years of very high inflation) and of the median price of a single family home which has both doubled in price and gotten larger (so the actual inflation component is less than half). Inflation is the general increase in prices for the same goods and services but if houses are increasing in size, you are buying more house. That is not inflation. That is more. And what’s more - the Newsweek article restricts itself to 70 metro areas (so it selects for where inflation was the highest). To summarize: when you select on high inflation metros, you get that one of the highest inflation products (housing) has less than an annualized 7% inflation rate from 2010-2020. ShadowStats is wrong

ShadowStats is simply wrong about previous and current U.S. inflation. Simple as that.

ShadowStats has two alternate CPI measures, one using pre-1980 methodology and one using pre-1990 methodology. I agree that the numbers from the pre-1980 methodology are clearly wrong. The pre-1990 methodology may also be overestimating inflation somewhat but looks closer to the true inflation IMO than the official CPI.

According to the official CPI, cumulative inflation from

Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!

or just under 2.5% per year annualized. However, most of the major expenses that I observed have increased by much more than 45% since 2009. E.g., I just looked up the rent for the apartment that I moved to in 2009 and the current asking rent is 2.3x what I paid back in 2009, lunch prices near my office approximately doubled over this period, tuition for the top private university near me is now 75% higher, etc.

 

[manqiangrexue]

Was debunking ShadowStats and you’ve done it for me.

No, I haven't. You wanted a person to point out a single thing that has doubled in price over 10 years as if it would prove something against you and I did that. How you can interpret this as proving ShadowStats wrong is beyond me; probably it has something to do with your penchant for failure at interpreting data.

They reported 7% inflation between 2010-2020 so aggregate price levels should’ve doubled in that period.

So in order to make that point, you would have to find reliable data on the aggregate price comparisons between 2010 and 2020, not issue a challenge to see if anyone could find a single thing that is twice as expensive in 2020 as it was in 2010.

Meanwhile, you bring evidence of a Big Mac from 2014-2024 (out of sample) has increased by 168% (not quite doubling even when your time frame includes years of very high inflation)

What do you think an increase by 100% means? That the price stayed the same? What does an increase of 50% mean? That the price is now half what it used to be? Because that's what you would have to think in order to interpret a 168% increase as less than doubling! A 100% increase means to double. A 168% increase means that the price is now 2.68X what it used to be.

Goddamn the title even told you what the data means so you wouldn't f it up and you still did! Don't come here with your bullshit charts and equations again if you don't even know basic math.

and of the median price of a single family home which has both doubled in price and gotten larger (so the actual inflation component is less than half). Inflation is the general increase in prices for the same goods and services but if houses are increasing in size, you are buying more house.

No, see the thing about data is you can't imagine it; you have to actually find the relevent data and interpret it correctly.

Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!

This shows that the average home size in 2023 is the same as it was in 2011 (or 2004/5 for that matter) and it is currently falling.

That is not inflation. That is more. And what’s more - the Newsweek article restricts itself to 70 metro areas (so it selects for where inflation was the highest). To summarize: when you select on high inflation metros, you get that one of the highest inflation products (housing) has less than an annualized 7% inflation rate from 2010-2020.

You wanted me to show you something that is twice as expensive now than it was 10 years ago and I did that. You did not ask for aggregate price level, which is what you should have asked for, which is why I say you don't know what data to use and how to interpret it. Of course there's no guarantee that aggregate price data will prove your point. It might prove the 7%... or it might be a phyrric victory if the calculation comes up to 6.5% or something.

ShadowStats is wrong

ShadowStats is simply wrong about previous and current U.S. inflation. Simple as that.

But you haven't proven it. What you did prove is that you can't find relevent data and you can't interpret it when given to you. Simple as that.

 

[HighGround]

Depends on the which date your measuring since that is broadly controlled by the function of 1 - (18(1.05)^x))/(21(1.02)^x)). A few tacit assumptions here about trend growth here.

Capital formation and technological development take time and are cumulative, initial differences in starting conditions (ex., US states in the South vs US states in the North) have persisted for 2+ centuries.

You're comparing inter-regional differences within one state, vs two separate states.

Consider other examples of two states who started in a similar place. Such as India and China. Or North Korea and South Korea. Or Poland vs Ukraine vs Greece (as recently as 1990s).

But anyway, even in United States, there is a reason for why the South remained poor, whereas the West of the country, which was even more poor (it wasn't even connected to the rest of the country until the first trans-continental railroad in 1860s), became wealthy. Poor historical/cultural circumstances, poor institutions, and poor decision-making is why the South has been terrible. Conversely, these are the same reasons for why today the South is on the relative upward swing, whereas the rest of the country is trying to stave off decline.

 

[gelgoog]

Very large semiconductor investment by Samsung in Texas

Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!

This isn't Samsung's first fab in Texas. The last time they built a fab there it ended up operating below capacity and bleeding money.
And back when it was built it was using their leading edge 14 nm FinFET process. At a time Samsung wasn't as behind TSMC in process technology as they are today. They still couldn't get enough orders.

A gigantic waste of money. Another money sink to please the US government.

 

[chgough34]

You're comparing inter-regional differences within one state, vs two separate states.

Consider other examples of two states who started in a similar place. Such as India and China. Or North Korea and South Korea. Or Poland vs Ukraine vs Greece (as recently as 1990s).

But anyway, even in United States, there is a reason for why the South remained poor, whereas the West of the country, which was even more poor (it wasn't even connected to the rest of the country until the first trans-continental railroad in 1860s), became wealthy. Poor historical/cultural circumstances, poor institutions, and poor decision-making is why the South has been terrible. Conversely, these are the same reasons for why today the South is on the relative upward swing, whereas the rest of the country is trying to stave off decline.

I mean, you’d expect in any free trade area with shared governance with no barriers to either capital or labor migration to have stronger beta-convergence than between different countries. There are idiosyncratic explanations for individual countries but with the standards conditional beta of 2%, you still need decades for gdppc between a poorer area and a wealthier area to converge. For emphasis, even within southern areas - Tennessee, North Carolina, and Virginia which were the wealthiest southern states in 1870 are still the wealthiest states compared to Mississippi, Alabama, and Louisiana. Differences between Southern states are smaller obviously.

 

[chgough34]

No, I haven't. You wanted a person to point out a single thing that has doubled in price over 10 years as if it would prove something against you and I did that. How you can interpret this as proving ShadowStats wrong is beyond me; probably it has something to do with your penchant for failure at interpreting data.

If we are arguing over whether the most extreme individual prices have doubled in an out of sample period with unusually high inflation, this effectively concedes that most prices did not double during a period of unusually low inflation. Thus, 7% inflation annually is clearly wrong.

So in order to make that point, you would have to find reliable data on the aggregate price comparisons between 2010 and 2020, not issue a challenge to see if anyone could find a single thing that is twice as expensive in 2020 as it was in 2010.


What do you think an increase by 100% means?
That the price stayed the same? What does an increase of 50% mean? That the price is now half what it used to be? Because that's what you would have to think in order to interpret a 168% increase as less than doubling! A 100% increase means to double. A 168% increase means that the price is now 2.68X what it used to be.

It means the authors forgot to subtract by 1 lol. And your article points to the McDonalds price hike as being the largest price hike. So thus, if the most extreme case is doubling between 2014-2024, the average case didn’t see prices double between 2014-2024 (which included an unusually inflationary period). So if annualized inflation in the most extreme case wasn’t 7% annualized, how could that be the average case? It can’t, ShadowStats is wrong about inflation. See actual prices of Big Macs -

Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!

..

No, see the thing about data is you can't imagine it; you have to actually find the relevent data and interpret it correctly.

Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!

This shows that the average home size in 2023 is the same as it was in 2011 (or 2004/5 for that matter) and it is currently falling.

Except no. Houses are not created and destroyed in the same year. A lot of new housing stock is to replace older housing stock (built many decades ago) and thus the average square footage of US housing has increased since housing construction decades ago involved much smaller homes, notwithstanding any developments this decade.

Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!

You wanted me to show you something that is twice as expensive now than it was 10 years ago and I did that.

Yes. This was in an inflation context so the expected subtext was that the goods or services were identical. Otherwise, it’s not inflation you are measuring.

In order for ShadowStats to be correct, you would need for the average case that prices doubled between 2010-2020. Yet even the most extreme cases don’t even meet that standard (even if you relax some of the timing considerations to be more inflationary). The site is wrong

 

[manqiangrexue]

If we are arguing over whether the most extreme individual prices have doubled in an out of sample period with unusually high inflation, this effectively concedes that most prices did not double during a period of unusually low inflation.

You're the one who asked to have that argument. Your stupidity caused you issue a challenge to anyone who could find anything that doubled in price in 10 years. Is that not what you did?

Thus, 7% inflation annually is clearly wrong.

Nothing here shows it.

It means the authors forgot to subtract by 1 lol.

LOLOL No, it means YOU don't know what a 168% increase means. The authors didn't forget anything or do anything wrong. You made the mistake, not them. If they subtracted by 1, (I assume you mean to turn 168% into 68%), then they would truly be wrong.

And your article points to the McDonalds price hike as being the largest price hike. So thus, if the most extreme case is doubling between 2014-2024, the average case didn’t see prices double between 2014-2024 (which included an unusually inflationary period).

268X is far more than doubling, which, somehow, you are STILL unable to comprehend. Calling MacDonald's the biggest offender means nothing; it means that of the few restaurants that they surveyed. It is NOT the most extreme case of everything sold in the US.

So if annualized inflation in the most extreme case wasn’t 7% annualized, how could that be the average case? It can’t,

Because 168% is far more than double; it's nearly triple.

ShadowStats is wrong about inflation.

You're wrong about math, and then even more wrong by attempting to cast blame on others for something that was undeniably due to your own incompetence. If I ever made a mistake anywhere near the magnitude of claiming that a 168% increase is less than doubling, I would never talk again.

See actual prices of Big Macs -

Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!

..

What wasn't actual about the Yahoo article I posted? You asked for one thing and I gave you more. I didn't ask you to give me one thing back that didn't double because unlike you, I'm not stupid enough to think that that serves as proof for anything. A Big Mac isn't a MacDouble Sandwich or fries, which my article showed. You issued a challenge; I exceeded it. You cannot excape from this truth.

Except no.

Except you don't know what a 168% increase means so how would you know anything related to charts or math?

Houses are not created and destroyed in the same year. A lot of new housing stock is to replace older housing stock (built many decades ago) and thus the average square footage of US housing has increased since housing construction decades ago involved much smaller homes, notwithstanding any developments this decade.

The average size home in the US has not increased since 2011. That's a chart. What you just provided is word diarrhea that means nothing.

Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!

Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!

on't have access; you'll need to post a picture.

Yes. This was in an inflation context so the expected subtext was that the goods or services were identical. Otherwise, it’s not inflation you are measuring.

MacDouble Sanwich - 168% increase - identical
Medium Fried - 138% increase - identical
Single family home - 113% increase - indentical in size from 2011 to 2023

In order for ShadowStats to be correct, you would need for the average case that prices doubled between 2010-2020.

So show with data that it isn't. Can you? Doesn't look like it.

Yet even the most extreme cases don’t even meet that standard (even if you relax some of the timing considerations to be more inflationary).

The 168% increase is 68% higher than that standard and it's the most extreme case out of like 10 restaurants. No one claims it is anywhere near the most extreme of all things in the US.

The site is wrong

You are always wrong, incompetent, incapable, and unrepentently American in your failed attempts to cover your cringe-inducing mistakes.