One benefit to living in inflationary times is it will make it easier to kill stupid ideas put forward by the government and industry — they will get too expensive due to cost over runs, and end being canceled.
Economy
NPR
Surging prices are steadily chipping away at Americans' buying power – as well as President Biden's approval rating.
The Labor Department reported Wednesday that consumer prices were 6.2% higher in October than a year ago. That's the sharpest increase since November of 1990.
Price increases were widespread, with energy, shelter, food and vehicles all costing more. Excluding volatile food and energy costs, prices were up 4.6%
Much of the upward pressure on prices is the result of a mismatch between booming demand and limited supply, as businesses struggle to find both parts and workers.
Many employers have increased pay in order to attract more workers. But growing paychecks have quickly been eroded by the rising cost of gas and groceries.
The Inflation Miscalculation Complicating Biden’s Agenda – The New York Times
U.S. unemployment claims fall to 52-year low after seasonal adjustments | PBS NewsHour
WASHINGTON (AP) — The number of Americans applying for unemployment benefits plummeted last week to the lowest level in more than half a century, another sign that the U.S. job market is rebounding rapidly from last year’s coronavirus recession.
Jobless claims dropped by 71,000 to 199,000, the lowest since mid-November 1969. But seasonal adjustments around the Thanksgiving holiday contributed significantly to the bigger-than-expected drop. Unadjusted, claims actually ticked up by more than 18,000 to nearly 259,000.
The four-week average of claims, which smooths out weekly ups and downs, also dropped — by 21,000 to just over 252,000, the lowest since mid-March 2020 when the pandemic slammed the economy.
READ MORE: Facing skilled worker shortage, U.S. companies try to train their own new labor pools
Since topping 900,000 in early January, the applications have fallen steadily toward and now fallen below their prepandemic level of around 220,000 a week. Claims for jobless aid are a proxy for layoffs.
Overall, 2 million Americans were collecting traditional unemployment checks the week that ended Nov. 13, down slightly from the week before.
Inflation, the monster that eats everything, good or bad 👹
Inflation, the monster that eats everything, good or bad 👹
IInflation makes everything more expensive, meaning that people cannot afford as much and must cut back. Previously affordable things must be scaled back, regardless if such scaling back is good or bad.
Inflation encourages conservation and cutting of wasteful spending but at the same time not all spending is bad. It encourages smaller cars and more insulation. It encourages people to reevaluate their budgets and work to live more within their means.
Inflation means that some very good government programs like college tuition programs or open space conservation will be killed off or reduced. Public programs often are victims of inflation as budgets are busted.
NPR
Economists may know (and even agree) that the current inflation is attributable to the pandemic and its aftermath: sluggish supply chains, reluctant workers, shortages and interrupted energy deliveries. We also know the government has mainlined trillions of dollars in buying power to consumers since the spring of 2020. Price hikes might be considered all but inevitable.
But one of the lessons from inflationary eras past is that voters are less interested in causal responsibility than in forcing a change. In other words, if you are in office now, you are holding the bag.
Losing out on my pension and the value of time and money 💵
Losing out on my pension and the value of time and money 💵
The other day I was reminded of the high cost to my pension of taking a year away from my state job to persue other non state work duties. That said, between my greater experiences and additional pay doing alternative activities it really came out to a wash after doing the math. It really wasn’t a year lost.
And I’m less concerned about my state pension than many other people. The 20 year mark and the jump from 1.6% to 2% per year of service is nice but it’s also kind of icing on the cake. I’ve been maxing out my Roth IRA and the 458 plan to the tune of around $25k for a few years now. I’ve also been aggressively investing and saving well over a thousand a month.
The truth is that I plan a fairly frugal semi retirement when those days come in around 15 years. I want to have my homestead, which I plan to pay for with cash in a low tax state and be able to avoid many of those costs of a typical suburbanite home owner. I want to live in a small, off grid cabin without a lot of furniture and appliances, produce a lot of my energy on site, raise and harvest a lot of my own food, heat with wood, shun expensive internet and television services, burn – compost – scrap my trash rather than paying for expensive landfill hauling and dumping services.
I don’t expect to be fully retired until 65 but I want to own land well before then – and will need a job with health insurance. But if I build up enough assets and trim my budget down enough, the actual income won’t be as big of a deal. Farm tractors, implements and land are expensive but the ordinary throw away suburbanite life is more expensive. Making a life at least partially off the land with livestock and a garden.