Capitol Hill Blue Forums Political Issues Finance, the economy & Economics What is inflation, anyway?

I paid 3.83 a gallon yesterday, but that is because it was 29 cents lower than it should have been because our Governor suspended the Georgia’s state gas tax. A year ago, the price was 2.91 which included the 29 cents Georgia gas tax. If the governor hadn’t suspended the gas tax, I would have paid 4.12 yesterday instead of 3.83.

July 27, 2021 less than half of the country was fully vaccinated and we were still seeing a thousand deaths per day, and our hospitals were still near collapse from overall caseloads. Demand for gasoline was CRUSHED.

And oil companies lost f*ck tons of money, along with lots of other industries.

Now, everybody is trying to make up for those lost profits when demand for many things was crushed.

Demand is now outstripping supply and that invariably comes with rising prices.

Nobody is arguing that they lost a lot of money.
But then again back in 2010 they also lost a ton of money because speculators failed to pay attention to whatever tradewinds
should have warned them to back off on their floating investment barges filled with Brent and NTI crudes.

So the oil companies AND their speculators both lost big.
And yet somehow I am having a tough time winding up the world's tiniest violin, because an oil company is nevertheless a license to print money and worrying about an oil company having to mortgage their Moms down the river because times izz tough and we need a new prezzy-dint (one who ain't no mope) just doesn't sound very convincing to me.

Up like a rocket, down like a feather, that's the way it works with fuel prices. Always has.
What irks me is that legions of twits are more than happy to just shrug nonchalantly and mutter about how "the folks has always blamed thuh prezzy-dint when gas goes through the roof and there tain't nuthin you can do about that."

Getting back to my original point: Of course gas was cheap, but it wasn't because some magical politician decreed it thus.

Yesterday I went to Safeway on the way home after dropping Rocksus off for some Dreyers Rocky Road ice cream. I normally shop at WINCO - a Pacific Northwest grocery chain with about 50 locations.

Safeways are a dime-a-dozen around here, and around the country for the matter.

I know the price of the half-gallon ice cream at WINCO is $4.49, but I would have to drive a little bit out of the way yesterday and I figured that Safeway would be a little bit more, but I did not expect the ice cream to be $2.30 more at $6.79.

It's shameful that Safeway takes advantage of "inflation" as they are doing. WINCO is much smaller so their buying power is not a great as Safeway (...and Albertsons. Albertsons owns Safeway). Safeway can basically tell Dryers what they want to pay for the product.

Greedy companies like Safeway/Albertsons suck.

My grocery bill has gone up about $18 a week. I usually pull the trigger on delivery when it hits 30 items. The total used to be about $130 but now is more often $148.

I just bought Breyer's extra creamy chocolate for $4.99 but it's on sale this week for $3.99

Damn....

Demand for real milk is dropping in favor of animal-free beverages. Lack of demand will drive dairy prices down until farmers sell the cows and give up farming...supplies will dwindle and prices will skyrocket...

I hope people aren't counting on almond milk too much because the California almond crop is going to go tits up if our drought doesn't see any relief this winter. I keep hearing that it takes almost one gallon of water PER ALMOND.
I hope to God that's an exaggeration but even if it only takes one QUART per almond or even half a quart, imagine what an entire super-sized industrial almond grove needs.

The San Joaquin River used to come out of the Sierras and empty into Suisun Bay, but not any more. It has miles and miles of dry river bed near the end, because all the water has been diverted for agriculture. I recently watched a Kayaking Down California's Longest River and it was really sad how many miles the poor guy had to travel by truck.

One thing lost in this inflation discussion is that inflation actually began under Trump with his "Jina" tariffs. Consumer goods, where a lot of America's inventory comes from (...let's be honest) rose in price because of Trump's tariffs. Trump never acknowledged that it was the American consumer who paid that tariff, Trump told his MAGAts that "Jina" was paying the tariffs - which of course with all things Trump - was a lie.

I’ll argue

Didn’t the stock market go up during covid?

Sure, GDP fell but as I recall, ‘line go up’ was the general description.

First time in my lifetime where I saw that having occurred. Nice hat trick. Good work if you can get it.