The State of the Economy Thread - “Falling inflation, rising growth give U.S. the world’s best recovery”

[The Evil Genius]

4 minutes ago, Captain Wiggles said:

So the Fast n Furious race car assholes speeding around towns are the real drivers of inflation eh? 🤔

 

 

I suspect car theft and break-ins are also up, causing the cascade in insurance costs.

 

But also its probably just corporate greed. 

[tshile]

Having done no research - I wonder if the price of vehicles going up is a big driver.    Changes the value of being totaled and raises the caps they’d pay on things. 
 

side note - great time to buy a truck. Finally pulled the trigger on mine last week. Still managed to get great value on my trade in too. 

[Ball Security]

3 minutes ago, tshile said:

Having done no research - I wonder if the price of vehicles going up is a big driver.    Changes the value of being totaled and raises the caps they’d pay on things. 
 

side note - great time to buy a truck. Finally pulled the trigger on mine last week. Still managed to get great value on my trade in too. 

I was thinking that’s the driver too. Along with used cars maintaining more value and not depreciating as quickly.

[The Evil Genius]

27 minutes ago, tshile said:

Having done no research - I wonder if the price of vehicles going up is a big driver.    Changes the value of being totaled and raises the caps they’d pay on things. 
 

side note - great time to buy a truck. Finally pulled the trigger on mine last week. Still managed to get great value on my trade in too. 

 

But wouldn't that increase then be explained by the invidivual driver's coverage amount? It's one thing to complain your insurance went up because you bought a 75k truck. It's another to see increases despite no changes to what's being covered and driving record, right?

 

Edit..or is the argument that other peoples higher price cars being added effects everyone's collision coverage?

Edited April 10 by The Evil Genius

[TradeTheBeal!]

I sure see a lot of Geico/Progressive/Liberty Biberty/USAA car ins commercials.  That industry kicks up one hell of an ad budget these days!

[tshile]

34 minutes ago, The Evil Genius said:

 

But wouldn't that increase then be explained by the invidivual driver's coverage amount? It's one thing to complain your insurance went up because you bought a 75k truck. It's another to see increases despite no changes to what's being covered and driving record, right?

 

Edit..or is the argument that other peoples higher price cars being added effects everyone's collision coverage?

Well, what I was thinking is the used car (and new) market had gone insane since Covid started. 
 

so a vehicle with 20k damage may have been totalled and capped at 15k, but now it’s value is 25k so they have to pay out and pay out an additional 5k. So they have to raise premiums to make up for it. 
 

id imagine it affects any vehicle that saw its value grow since covid in the used market (which I imagine is most vehicles…)

[tshile]

Also with labor and parts going up, if your not totalled your repairs are quite a bit more expensive these days. 

[PleaseBlitz]

The baby formula prices aren't a surprise.  Baby formula prices are way up because the industry is so concentrated (4 companies make 97% of the formula in the US) and because the price is almost entirely inelastic (if you need baby formula, you will buy baby formula at almost any price because your baby needs food). There was a significant shortage in 2022 and the 4 firms discovered that the market will bear higher prices, so now those higher prices are the going rate. 

[Renegade7]

2 hours ago, PleaseBlitz said:

The baby formula prices aren't a surprise.  Baby formula prices are way up because the industry is so concentrated (4 companies make 97% of the formula in the US) and because the price is almost entirely inelastic (if you need baby formula, you will buy baby formula at almost any price because your baby needs food). There was a significant shortage in 2022 and the 4 firms discovered that the market will bear higher prices, so now those higher prices are the going rate. 

 

See...stuff like this seems like a prime example of the need for government to step in and protect its citizens from the inherent nature of capitalism.

 

Someone has to look at this and see they are price gouging because people can't let their kids starve and say "hold TF up".  I can only fault a business for trying to do its job of turning a profit so much, but this is taking it too far.

 

If we can put a price cap in insulin, I'd like my government to engage in a similar conversation on baby formula.  It's a sensitive topic with respect to the people ready to scream socialism every chance they get, but I'd like to see the government at least prioritize review of pricing for matters that have citizens by the balls like that.

 

I'll admit to having strong opinions on aspects of our economy that are fine being profit driven versus detrimental to our society being profit driven.

Edited April 10 by Renegade7

[tshile]

I haven’t done the digging but I have, for a while now, had the sense that if our government would do more about breaking up monopolies, problems like that would solve themselves. 

[Renegade7]

Just now, tshile said:

I haven’t done the digging but I have, for a while now, had the sense that if our government would do more about breaking up monopolies, problems like that would solve themselves. 

 

Informal monopolies as well.

 

Example when a handful of companies know they can work together to run the whole industry sector or when one company shows up and takes over such a huge chunk of the industry their competitors have to orbit around them.

 

Our current anti-trust laws seem incredibly slow with picking up on this, but every once in a while it seems so obvious even they figure it out and finally act.

[TradeTheBeal!]

Related content.

 

 

[China]

How immigrant workers in US have helped boost job growth and stave off a recession

 

How has the economy managed to prosper, adding hundreds of thousands of jobs, month after month, at a time when the Federal Reserve has aggressively raised interest rates to fight inflation — normally a recipe for a recession?

 

Increasingly, the answer appears to be immigrants — whether living in the United States legally or not. The influx of foreign-born adults vastly raised the supply of available workers after a U.S. labor shortage had left many companies unable to fill jobs.

 

More workers filling more jobs and spending more money has helped drive economic growth and create still-more job openings. The availability of immigrant workers eased the pressure on companies to sharply raise wages and to then pass on their higher labor costs to their customers via higher prices that feed inflation. Though U.S. inflation remains elevated, it has plummeted from its levels of two years ago.

 

“There’s been something of a mystery — how are we continuing to get such extraordinary strong job growth with inflation still continuing to come down?’’ said Heidi Shierholz, president of the Economic Policy Institute and a former chief economist at the Labor Department. “The immigration numbers being higher than what we had thought — that really does pretty much solve that puzzle.’’

 

Click on the link for the full article

[Larry]

2 hours ago, China said:

How immigrant workers in US have helped boost job growth and stave off a recession

 

How has the economy managed to prosper, adding hundreds of thousands of jobs, month after month, at a time when the Federal Reserve has aggressively raised interest rates to fight inflation — normally a recipe for a recession?

 

Increasingly, the answer appears to be immigrants — whether living in the United States legally or not. The influx of foreign-born adults vastly raised the supply of available workers after a U.S. labor shortage had left many companies unable to fill jobs.

 

Been thinking for a while that one explanation for how the economy adds 300,000 jobs a month, for 36 months in a row, to an economy where boomers are retiring faster than teenagers are entering the job market, is that somebody is filling those jobs. 

[Renegade7]

[Cooked Crack]

 

[China]

Why Homelessness Stalks America Like the Grim Reaper

 

Yesterday, the US Supreme Court will hear a case involving efforts by the City of Grants Pass, Oregon to keep homeless people off its streets and out of its parks and other public property. The city had tried a number of things when the problem began to explode in the last year of the Trump administration, as The Oregonian newspaper notes:

 

Quote

“They discussed putting them in their old jail, creating an unwanted list, posting signs at the city border or driving people out of town... Currently, officers patrol the city nearly every day, Johnson said, handing out [$295] citations to people who are camping or sleeping on public property or for having too many belongings with them.”

 

The explosion in housing costs have triggered two crises: homelessness and inflation. The former is harming the livability of our cities and towns, and the Fed’s reaction to the latter threatens an incumbency-destroying recession just as we head into what will almost certainly be the most important election in American history.

 

The problem with housing inflation is so severe today that without it the nation’s overall core CPI inflation rate would be in the neighborhood of Fed Chairman Jerome Powell’s 2 percent goal.

 

 

Both homeless and today’s inflation are the result of America — unlike many other countries — allowing housing to become a commodity that can be traded and speculated in by financial markets and overseas investors.
 

Thirty-two percent seems to be the magic threshold, according to research funded by the real estate listing company Zillow. When neighborhoods hit rent rates in excess of 32 percent of neighborhood income, homelessness explodes.

 

And we’re seeing it play out right in front of us in cities across America because a handful of Wall Street billionaires want to make a killing.

 

Today, the Fed says, the median house sells for $479,500 while the median American personal income is $41,000 — a ratio of more than ten-to-one between housing costs and annual income.

 

As the Zillow study notes:

 

Quote

“Across the country, the rent burden already exceeds the 32 percent [of median income] threshold in 100 of the 386 markets included in this analysis….”

 

“This research demonstrates that the homeless population climbs faster when rent affordability — the share of income people spend on rent — crosses certain thresholds. In many areas beyond those thresholds, even modest rent increases can push thousands more Americans into homelessness.”

 

Click on the link for the full article

[Renegade7]

There's been studies and research that show nearly half the homeless people in our country actually have jobs.

 

https://endhomelessness.org/blog/employed-and-experiencing-homelessness-what-the-numbers-show/

 

The idea that cities can see a housing and rent crisis, know this, and still demonize and criminalize homelessness to point SCOTUS has to get involved is the optiome of liberal hypocrisy.

 

It's the one thing Liberals jus keep getting wrong when push comes to shove and its in their face versus something they can tweet about from a distance.

[Captain Wiggles]

Yeah the Democrats are the problem. Jfc dude 🤣

 

https://newdemocratcoalition.house.gov/media-center/press-releases/new-democrat-coalition-affordable-housing-task-force-unveils-comprehensive-action-plan-to-build-more-homes-and-lower-costs

 

Remind me what the Republicans plan is to address the housing problem? 

[TheDoyler23]

 

12 hours ago, Captain Wiggles said:

 

Remind me what the Republicans plan is to address the housing problem? 

“Oh there are programs for that .”*
 

*that we don’t want to fund, especially  if it helps people who are gay, trans, immigrants, felons etc. 

Edited April 24 by TheDoyler23

[tshile]

12 hours ago, Captain Wiggles said:

Yeah the Democrats are the problem. Jfc dude 🤣

That seems unfair. 
the notion this is something that can be solved at the federal level seems silly to me. You’re forced to paint with broad strokes when you do things that way and I think it’s fair to say the problem is very local and best solved by local people that see the problem first hand. And for major cities the local people are dems. 
 

I don’t know what the right answer is but I’m not sure we have an example of anywhere doing a good job. 
 

it’d be nice if some major cities would try some different things and compare notes to see what does and doesn’t work. 
 

nationally it’d be nice if we didn’t demonize these people, and considered what could be changed about investment groups scooping up SFH and other properties simply to rent them as I firmly believe it exacerbates the problem. (Just my opinion)

Also your link seems like a lot of general grandiose and/or ambiguous language without much specifics and again seems to focused on federal level stuff 

 

I suppose it’s a start but it’s a far cry from championing actual action 

[The Evil Genius]

Assuming there is no housing bubble and maybe thinking outside of the box (or not)..is there a way to implement 40 year home loans and somehow cap lender interest rates to something more reasonable to make the current level of housing prices more affordable?

 

That said, where I live also has some other factors that need to be addressed to make current housing affordable here. 

 

1. I pay $10+k in property tax alone based on a house that has a current taxable value of roughly $660k (with a zillow est value of over $900k). My father in law, whose house is est worth over $1.2 mil, pays less than $1500 in property tax because the taxable value of his house is only $87k. Prop 13 has seriously ****ed up property taxes and housing prices in California.

 

2. Insurance. I keep seeing friends losing their home insurance because the major companies are pulling out of the state or refusing to insure in risk areas (even cancelling existing policies when someone scored s 4 out of 30 for fire risk). This leaves them often with only high priced insurance options. Until this is fixed, I can't imagine housing being affordable again here. 

Edited April 24 by The Evil Genius