CPI-U rises 7.2% annualized in September (3.7% YoY) | Hacker News Reader

CPI-U rises 7.2% annualized in September (3.7% YoY)

bls.gov

Heating oil prices increasing 26% in August and September, up 74% YoY... it's going to be a horrible winter for a lot of families, mine included. Heating bills are going to be over $1k / month for a lot of the northeast. You can't budget for a 75% increase in a major expense.

A good opportunity for everyone to start thinking about improving their (current/future) home insulation - if they can afford it, that is.

For example in the EU, while good insulation has always been a given in the Nordics for obvious reasons (although modern buildings are even better!), it's only relatively recently that these topics have started to be taken more seriously in the south. Energy costs were generally affordable, and there wasn't as much focus on the environmental side of things (i.e. using energy more efficiently to reduce pollution or switching to cleaner energy sources).

Just trying to shed a positive light on all of this, even if things are gonna suck for a while.

Here in Ireland it seems like I'll be spending north of 1k in oil heating thanks to certain armed conflicts... and I still have 200 liters from the previous owner. 840 EUR for 500 liters, who knows if that will be enough for this winter.

> CPI for All Urban Consumers (CPI-U)

And CPI is "Consumer Price Index", aka inflation measurement.

For anyone unfamiliar with the title. (Like me)

Where are they shopping that prices have only risen 3.7% YoY? That does not match neither my grocery bill inflation nor product shrinkflation.

I thought the same a bit too. My conjecture is that people working in tech usually live a high-growth area, and tend to experience much higher inflation due to local growth. This also explains why younger people tend to be hitted more

I don't live in a high-growth area and I'm pretty sure I'm seeing way more than 3.7% inflation at the grocery store.

They are shopping at a place with hedonic adjustment.

Yes. I get that these metrics aren't always measuring the world from the view of a real person. But my income over the last few years has been tied to the official interest rate while my spending habits have stayed the same. Yet I've gone from socking away a bit every month to starting to cut back a bit as I was winding up negative every month. At least for this single person's anecdata, the official inflation rate is much lower than my real life inflation rate.

Have they? Or is that just your vague sense of things?

There's lots of data out there, for example: https://prices.marketreportblog.com

they call it "market basket" inflation. If eggs go up 20% and steak goes up 3%, inflation is recorded as 3% because obviously people will choose steak over eggs this year. Then next year, if steak goes up by 20% and eggs go up by 3%, inflation is recorded as 3% because obviously people will choose eggs over steak this year. This way, inflation is recorded as 6% even though everything costs 25% more; the governace gets to pat themselves on the back in the Bahamas with their piles of cash while the proles are left dumbfounded and starving.

That's not how it works. Both steak and eggs are part of the basket every month. Specifically, eggs are 0.133% of the answer and ground beef/roasts/steaks are 0.638% of the answer.

> Prices are collected each month in 75 urban areas across the country from about 6,000 housing units and approximately 22,000 retail establishments (department stores, supermarkets, hospitals, and other types of stores and service establishments). [...] Prices of most goods and services are obtained by personal visit, telephone call, web, or app collection by the Bureau's trained representatives.

The BLS does document their process in detail on their FAQ [0].

This might not match your experience because your family doesn't shop the same basket of goods the families the BLS surveyed do. There are also regional variations in the prices of goods. Even store prices in the same region vary. All of these variations get averaged out.

This is why you can't extrapolate from n=1.

[0] https://www.bls.gov/cpi/questions-and-answers.htm

_Maybe_ (didn't check) this is tampered by things like housing, which is a huge part of spend but hasn't risen as much as groceries (thankfully)?

I think you mean "tempered"? "Tampered" changes the meaning of your comment considerably!

> Where are they shopping that prices have only risen 3.7% YoY? That does not match neither my grocery bill inflation nor product shrinkflation.

All-items was 3.7%. That does not mean components with-in the overall rate were also 3.7%. Particular components may have gone up more that the overall rate, but only a fraction of that is part of the all-items that is seen in the headlines.

Further, if your personal basket of goods is most likely different than the average basket of goods mix, so your personal inflation rate will be different from the headline number. StatCan, who does the CPI for Canada, actually has a tool for finding out your personal inflation rate based on your purchases:

* https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/pub/71-607-x/71-607-x2020015...

If you're prepared for a bit of a rabbit hole you can look at https://www.shadowstats.com/ which was allegedly the result of airline econometrics predictive model stopping working and that spurred someone to figure out what was going on.

The idea that the government would cook the books in their favor isn't outside the realm of possibility. The idea that it's been happening for 40+ years is worrying.

> The idea that the government would cook the books in their favor isn't outside the realm of possibility.

Every admin, both major parties and all of big business gain from understating inflation, it's a fundamental conflict of interest. Calling it a "possibility" might be a tiny tad timid, I think.

The worst part of all this is that they are now going to raise rates when this is not money supply driven inflation. You cannot lower inflation by interest rates when it is caused by rising oil and ferilizer prices.

But I am afraid this is what they will do to screw the democrats after they take the house and the senate and then blame the market crash all on them.

> You cannot lower inflation by interest rates when it is caused by rising oil and ferilizer prices.

Why?

Lowering interest rates does not create more oil. This inflation is caused by an oil supply problem, not a money supply problem. Lowering the money supply will make things worse since industry will already be facing head winds from higher oil prices and making money more expensive to borrow will slow production and investment even further.

People don’t realize just how much of our economy is driven by oil. Nearly all of it.

Yeah, people have the memories of a fruit fly. It's why Trump was elected again after his disaster of a first term.

doesn’t help that the Dems are (rightfully) unpopular. hope they can get their shit together.

I'm cautiously optimistic with the DSA candidates that have been winning. People have had enough of the status quo. However, at this point I'd take status quo over the chaos and blatant corruption of those currently holding a majority.

> You cannot lower inflation by interest rates when it is caused by rising oil and ferilizer prices.

Sure you can. Make it expensive to finance buying oil and fertilizer and demand for them reduces.

That will make oil and fertilizer more expensive, but does not increase the amount of oil and fertilizer. And you will also starve people and crash the economy.

Higher gas prices mean more people switch to bikes, public transport, EVs, or cut back on travel. They're pissed off, obviously, and their quality of life (or at least, "fun") is reduced. But they use less gas. Less demand is mathematically the same as more supply.

Starvation in the US is highly unlikely. The country's farmers produce far in excess of what's needed to feed the population. Other countries are not so lucky and they are already facing hard times.

> The country's farmers produce far in excess of what's needed to feed the population

World-wide, accounting for every person vs every calorie, starvation has been a pricing and distribution problem for decades, not a "We don't have enough calories world-wide to feed everyone" problem. I agree with your overall point, but I don't believe "US farmers grow enough to feed the American people" the best supporting evidence.

The US doesn't have a distribution problem either. It's an advanced economy with well-developed transportation and logistics networks.

Every city and town has food banks, community kitchens, places of worship with free meals for those in need. They'll need a lot more funding, and hopefully they get it. It'll be rough. But actual starvation, as in dying due to not enough calories, is highly unlikely.

> They'll need a lot more funding

This is exactly my point: while we agree that starvation is extremely unlikely, the problem is not raw caloric output. Stating in your earlier comment, "the country's farmers produce far in excess of what's needed to feed the population", is like saying the sun outputs enough energy to grow the crops, in that neither was really the problem in the first place. A major weak point though is funding, and financial support from, for example, the government.

Starvation in the US is beyond rare. "American farmers produce enough to keep everyone fed" is weak supporting evidence of that statement.

> the problem is not raw caloric output

I said that because the person I responded to claimed higher fertilizer prices would result in starvation. Presumably because there would be less food grown.

> Starvation in the US is beyond rare

Any sources? I'd love to learn.

I don't mean malnutrition, or food deserts, or food insecurity, all of which exist.

I never claimed higher fertilizer prices alone would result in starvation. I’m claiming higher diesel prices higher fertilizer. Prices in combination will probably cause starvation. It might not be in the US, but it will be in other places. You don’t seem to care about.

> It might not be in the US, but it will be in other places. You don’t seem to care about

I already wrote that in my earlier response to you. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50089884

> the person I responded to claimed higher fertilizer prices would result in starvation

I can't say why, but I blanked on this being the rationale for your reasoning. I gave you way less credit than you deserved there, my bad

If only prices didn't take the elevator while salaries took the stairs.

If salaries also took the elevator, then it's a recipe for hyperinflation. Slow wage growth is a natural check on runaway inflation. Yes, it's cruel on an individual level, but on a macro level, we are better off.

The ideal way inflation should come down is increased capacity and/or lower government spending

I know the macroeconomics argument, but it leaves the same distaste in my brain that "trickle down economics" leave.

All I see lately is that for example macro numbers adjusted by inflation seem to tell a story of increased purchase power, but reality seems a bit.. different? dunno.

> Slow wage growth is a natural check on runaway inflation. Yes, it's cruel on an individual level, but on a macro level, we are better off.

Generally, it's fine if it's the little guy who pays the price. So true in so many areas.

Inflation comes from the monetary supply not government spending. If you want lower inflation, you increase interest rates to discourage loans and mortgages.

> Inflation comes from the monetary supply

Not al all in this case. This is all caused by lower physical supply of oil, gas, diesel and fertilizer from the Iran War. Tightening the money supply will not fix this.

There's a floor for oil, gas, and fertilizer consumption and we're nowhere near it. What that floor looks like: getting the car out only to go to work or the hospital, zero new SUVs and pickups sold for an entire year, not growing corn for ethanol etc.

Reducing money supply will reduce the amount of money available to spend on oil, gas, and fertilizer, thus reducing the demand of those things to match the lowered supply.

> Reducing money supply will reduce the amount of money available to spend on oil, gas, and fertilizer, thus reducing the demand of those things to match the lowered supply.

People and businesses need to buy gas and oil. It is not discretionary spending. They also need to buy food, and food prices are not higher because of the money supply, nor because people are buying more food, they are higher because oil prices are higher.

Also, all that lowered spending you cited will mean closed businesses and economic collapse. Say goodbye to AI as well.

You cannot control inflation caused by a supply shock by rising interest rates.

> People and businesses need to buy gas and oil. It is not discretionary spending

Not all of it is non-discretionary - as in people die or get hurt if it doesn't happen. Definitely not in developed countries. I've already described what "bare minimum" use looks like, and rich countries are nowhere near that.

> Also, all that lowered spending you cited will mean closed businesses and economic collapse

That is correct. It does, however, "fix" inflation. When more people are poorer, they have less money to spend.

> You cannot control inflation caused by a supply shock by rising interest rates.

Supply shocks can always be dealt with by destroying demand. This may result in a degraded quality of life. But it will fix inflation.

In that case, the word "inflation" is overloaded by describing two very different things.

Thing one, low interest rates result in higher availability of money, causing prices to go up due to increased monetary supply.

Thing two, scarcity of a resource (diesel) causes price of that resource to go up. The resource happens to run the backbone of our economy, so most other prices go up as a result.

These are not the same, as the first is the weakening of the currency against some theoretical static "value", and the second involves the currency keeping its same "value", and instead it is the goods themselves which require more of that value to be produced/sold.

The end result (prices up across the board) is the same but the mechanism is very different.

Inflation _is_ the "prices up across the board". It's a measurement. The causes you described are causes of inflation while not being inflation itself.

It's been both. Here's the Cleveland Fed on "The Origin and Evolution of the word 'Inflation'": https://www.clevelandfed.org/-/media/project/clevelandfedten...

Structurally it's useful to distinguish the two, in my opinion.

Tightening can "fix" this. Monetary supply isn't the cause of the inflation, so a monetary supply fix will cause nasty secondary effects, but tightening the monetary supply will lower inflation. It'll work by destroying parts of the economy, reducing demand. Oil prices might still go up, but prices of other things will go down because all the unemployed people are buying less stuff.

This is a naive understanding.

If you bomb your supply chains, no amount of interest rate manipulation will make it come down (supply shock through destruction of capacity)

If you make all doctors/lawyers to undergo recertification, medical costs will skyrocket (supply shock through regulation)

If you deport all your construction workers, bringing construction to a screeching halt, housing costs will skyrocket (supply shock through xenophobia)

tl;dr The Big(0) cause of inflation are capacity (supply) and other stupid governmental responses to it. (printing more money)

Interest rates actually come way below these factors.

Interest rates will never discourage corrupt governments from printing (borrowing) more money and giving them to the mass .

There is a finite amount of money.

If you bomb your capacity to produce oil and consumers must pay more for oil that money comes from elsewhere i.e less video games. That is simply a price increase not inflation. It would like confusing the weather and climate. Inflation is defined as the "general increase in prices".

If you add money to the existing finite amount of money you get inflation.

Yes and no. At the end of the day, there is a certain natural demand for goods/services and a natural production capacity.

Suppressing demand below natural production capacity is just chopping of your own arm. That's why Interest rates are the Big(O) factor it is made out to be. It is always government policies

-- allow economy to operate at full capacity

-- don't print (borrow) money more than full capacity

Who buys the hundreds of trillions in government bonds? The USA has a lot of buyers, they’re lucky as that’s not the case everywhere. Sometimes the spending is too out of control and there aren’t enough organic buyers. That’s when central banks come in and go brrrr and money supply increases.

My salary took the dumbwaiter to the basement :(.

Highly likely there will be no rate cuts for the rest of this year. Higher for longer and the fed is going to either hold or increase interest rates.

POTUS has been reported as saying that hes waiting for midterms to end before taking action. I see at least two more years with no rate cuts; the possibility of fuel rationing also appears to be possible in light of all the refining/logistics facilities being wantonly destroyed. Its going to be a very rough time.

We are here in large part because of POTUS so what would actions after midterms have to be? Stop being himself?

Stop trying to manipulate the economy before the midterms and just let the problem play out.

If he's trying to manipulate the economy in the direction of lowering cost of living, he's doing a terrible job at it. Useless wars and tariffs have been highly inflationary.

IMO he is doing a terrible job, full stop.

And just what action is POTUS going to do to make things better? He's not in charge of interest rates. Start another useless war? Piss off another country? More inflationary tariffs? Give another multi-billion military contract to his family?

No pain, no gain.

Our country has been at a breaking point for a long time now. More pain will only result in greater societal ill.

Sure will, but there's plenty of private gain for the right people.

Yes but pain != gain. If I stab myself in the foot with a pencil, the only thing I’ve achieved is having a hurty foot. Oof ow ouchie

>The CPIs are based on prices of food, clothing, shelter, fuels, transportation, doctors' and dentists' services, drugs, and other goods and services that people buy for day-to-day living.

Convenient how it doesn't also include housing cost increases, as if that's not part of day-to-day living, like we're all snails carrying our house on our back we got for free since birth, when housing costs are possibly the highest burden on most young workers now.

Edit: I am wrong

> clothing, *shelter*, fuels,

(Emphasis mine)

> Convenient how it never tracks housing cost increases

I think that is included in shelter. I might be wrong.

Oh, my bad, I assumed that was just utilities and bills.

The people who complain about CPI do so because CPI IIRC bases "shelter" off of rental costs.

Home prices themselves aren't really used, because they're based off of interest rates, land values, and many other attributes that don't really apply to CPI. Rental costs for all of their faults, are a better measurement of month-to-month or year-to-year inflation.

So you're right. They don't really include "house" prices. But they absolutely include "housing" prices.

In my experience, people who complain about CPI mostly do so because they don't understand it, and it doesn't match their vague sense of reality.

> The people who complain about CPI do so because CPI IIRC bases "shelter" off of rental costs.

My experience with people complaining about CPI is usually simply that the numbers don't match their feeling.

Looking at the description [1] is really interesting:

> The shelter component of the CPI includes two major items: rent of primary residence and owners' equivalent rent (OER). Rent of primary residence, or simply rent, refers to the cost of renting a place on the market. [...] OER refers to the amount of rent that a homeowner would be paid if they were renting out their own home in the market. [...] is calculated by splitting the non-recurring cost of buying a home real estate into rental payments

I got a bit tired reading [2] for more details, as it isn't even my countries CPI...

> The expenditure weight in the CPI market basket for OER is based on the following question that the CE Survey asks of consumers who own their primary residence: “If someone were to rent your home today, how much do you think it would rent for monthly, unfurnished and without utilities?”

Left me a bit unsatisfied, but I'll keep it at that. The followup question would be how much rent prices deviate from housing prices. I am sure that has a lot of data though.

[1] https://en.macromicro.me/charts/24/cpi-house

[2] https://www.bls.gov/cpi/factsheets/owners-equivalent-rent-an...

Thanks for double-checking and digging into the weeds for me. I read it years ago but apparently I forgot some details.

This site is just reddit now.

> Convenient how it doesn't also include housing cost increases …

It does, but only urban renting. It doesn’t measure increases in housing costs for suburbs directly. In particular it does not track increases in home values or mortgage payments for new buyers based on current rates.

> Edit: I am wrong

To be fair, this is a really common myth. Unless you actually read the BLS methodology, you wouldn't have known. And in most places, anyone attempting to combat this myth is met with down votes.

> The index for food was unchanged in September, as the index for food away from home increased 0.2 percent and the index for food at home fell 0.1 percent.

Restaurant prices are absolutely out of control. My local Chickfila is no longer wrapping cars around the parking lot. They might still be putting up good numbers via expansion but there is no way the per-store economics are trending well.

I remember when it was arguably cheaper (especially once you factor in your time) to go buy off the Taco Bell value menu. You could get a bag of burritos filled to the top for like $12. This will hardly purchase a single menu item today.

It feels like we are in some kind of fast food death spiral right now.

I eat at Taco Bell way too much, in Manhattan, and this is hogwash. I'm looking at the menu on my phone right now.

A cheesy bean and rice burrito (404 calories) is $1.49.

Not only are there no single items anywhere close to $12, there are seven combos (that include a drink) for under $12, and the most expensive ones are $13-14 (excluding group combos).

My typical order costs $8.48 with tax and includes two crunchy tacos, a beefy 5-layer burrito, cinnamon twists, and a medium drink.

I have to say, that is very cheap! but eating out in Ireland has recently become much less affordable relative to cooking at home.

Hope you start eating healthier. That frankenfood isn't good in the long run.

Really? Wow, never heard this before. I had no idea!

According to Taco Bell's website that's $0.10 less than the same burrito costs in my midwestern suburb. Weird.

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