The CPI Is Underrepresenting Food Inflation By 40%: Here's The Proof

[angelatc]

My dad (a conservative) would not allow my Mom to work even though she had a college degree and wanted to. She was top in her class and extremely bright. Her place was in the home he insisted.

Sounds like she wasn't bright enough to marry well. The perpetual victim. I am shocked.

 

[nikcers]

Sounds like she wasn't bright enough to marry well. The perpetual victim. I am shocked.

Either that or she didn't have the fear of god put into her that if they don't work they will go hungry or homeless or if they don't work its because the males in society are oppressing them not because they chose not to.

 

[ATruepatriot]

Oh yeah I was joking there, we have a whole underground homeless city in Las Vegas. They always wash up when we have flash floods in the summer. I remember stories about people getting picked up for not having money in their pocket and being shipped off into other states. The mob didn't like people from other states coming here losing all of their money and then never going back home.

I lived in Vegas for awhile, out on East Owens. The problem with Vegas when judging homeless is that it is hard to judge who is homeless because of true hard luck economics and those who are homeless because their personal addictions put them there.

 

[nikcers]

Absolutely... Being homeless in better weather is a much better alternative to being homeless anywhere else...

You just got to look at the whole unemployment explosion in the 2008 recession and you can see a lot of people who chose not to work because they had that as an option not because they didn't want to work for less of a wage than before but because unemployment was an option.

 

[Zippyjuan]

Sounds like she wasn't bright enough to marry well. The perpetual victim. I am shocked.

She did not know that when they got married. He was considered a "catch" and was smart and talented as well. He was an engineer and also artistically skilled.

 

[nikcers]

She did not know that when they got married. He was considered a "catch" and was smart and talented as well.

I know lots of married women who would love to have a catch like your dad.

 

[Schifference]

Absolutely... Being homeless in better weather is a much better alternative to being homeless anywhere else...

IDK. I would prefer a temperate climate. But after reading the PDF book regarding getting back to nature written in 1904 it appears you can acclimate to the cold and cold is good for you. I would opt for a nicer climate. I think I would get myself a one way ticket to Hawaii. Then build a floating raft that is small enough that it doesn't need registration. I wouldn't go for the seasteader concept of 12 miles out. I would go for the close to shore on the calm side of the island. The idea is that I could have my personal space and swim to shore to panhandle, peddle, and or scrounge. Sleep on the raft when the weather permits away from the other homeless bums.

 

[Schifference]

double post

 

[angelatc]

She did not know that when they got married.

Like I said...

 

[nikcers]

I lived in Vegas for awhile, out on East Owens. The problem with Vegas when judging homeless is that it is hard to judge who is homeless because of true hard luck economics and those who are homeless because their personal addictions put them there.

Yeah there was a time after the big recession and mortgage collopase where there were a lot of well off people who were temporarily going to the local bood bank who were working and paying off their mortgage but still needed food because they were going hungry otherwise. My dad ran one of the food banks until he passed away but he was always telling me about the people coming in there and some of them would steal from other hungry people there but others were just down on their luck, some of them were veterans with PTSD, some of them were homeless because they had lost their family in the middle east wars and had no one else to help them out. Those were the ones that he felt bad for, you could always tell the difference between the guy who fucked over everyone they know and the person who just doesn't know anyone or have any sort of family.

 

[dannno]

My dad (a conservative) would not allow my Mom to work even though she had a college degree and wanted to. She was top in her class and extremely bright. Her place was in the home he insisted.

If this is true, I may have to re-think my stance on stay-at-home moms.

 

[nikcers]

If this is true, I may have to re-think my stance on stay-at-home moms.

What's you stance? Lots of mom's list being a mom as their proudest achievements in life. I was watching this documentary about a guy who built rockets for NASA and he made it a point to say his kids were the only thing that he was more proud of than his rocket launches.

 

[Swordsmyth]

If this is true, I may have to re-think my stance on stay-at-home moms.

You can't blame the whole idea of stay at home moms for zippy, he is probably just a bad seed.

 

[TheTexan]

The exercise in the OP is a poor attempt to measure overall price inflation. It does not even look at price changes over time and uses way too small of a sample. All it shows is that some stores charge different prices for the same items. That is not a measure of inflation.



Food accounts for about eleven percent of consumer spending and thus is counted as eleven percent of the CPI. Flour products are a small segment of that so a bad measure of overall price inflation.

Different stores do have different prices and the CPI looks at tens of thousands of prices in all categories and across the country.

Thanks Zippy! I feel a lot better now that I know the CPI can be trusted.

 

[TheTexan]

What's you stance? Lots of mom's list being a mom as their proudest achievements in life. I was watching this documentary about a guy who built rockets for NASA and he made it a point to say his kids were the only thing that he was more proud of than his rocket launches.

I guess, if his kids were astronauts or something

 

[nikcers]

I guess, if his kids were astronauts or something

Specifially what stood out the most to me was when he talked about his 8 different rocket launches were only shadowed to him by the birth of his 8 kids.

 

[TheTexan]

Specifially what stood out the most to me was when he talked about his 8 different rocket launches were only shadowed to him by the birth of his 8 kids.

Every parent says that cliche but I don't buy it.

The only reason I can remember the day my son was born was because the cowboys had just won the NFC championship.

 

[ATruepatriot]

Every parent says that cliche but I don't buy it.

The only reason I can remember the day my son was born was because the cowboys had just won the NFC championship.

It's funny...

 

[loveshiscountry]

My dad (a conservative) would not allow my Mom to work even though she had a college degree and wanted to. She was top in her class and extremely bright. Her place was in the home he insisted.

Sounds like a sweet man. Did he beat her when she left her face uncovered?

 

[Fox McCloud]

The exercise in the OP is a poor attempt to measure overall price inflation. It does not even look at price changes over time and uses way too small of a sample. All it shows is that some stores charge different prices for the same items. That is not a measure of inflation.



Food accounts for about eleven percent of consumer spending and thus is counted as eleven percent of the CPI. Flour products are a small segment of that so a bad measure of overall price inflation.

Different stores do have different prices and the CPI looks at tens of thousands of prices in all categories and across the country.

I do think it highlights the current weakness with the CPI though. A lot of modern economics is aggregation of large data sets and condensing it into one refined point that is applied to everyone. It's the average consumer, the average purchasing of an average basket of goods.

So while what you bring up does have some merit, the averaging of everything among these stats does hide some problems. As an example, if all food more than doubled in price, it'd have a horrific impact on a lot of low and middle income individuals, but in the CPI, it'd still only end up being a moderate increase in inflation.

The Keynesian tendancy to aggregate everything leaves a lot of blind spots and only captures the world, at a glance. I can understand why they do it, and to some degree it is necessary, but constantly combing over things with a broad comb is going to give an inaccurate picture.