Notice the things that got more expensive are the things the government pays for or subsidizes. Let's hope they don't create a "Department of TV and Electronics!
Nice chart, but it has one problem: the average hourly wage.
See that spike in 2020. No one's wages spiked in 2020. The spike is a compositional effect that happens in _unit value_ indices. We do not have price indices of wages; BLS does not produce or publish them. What we have are aggregations of unit values of remuneration. I do not know if and index of wages rose by 23.3% between 2020 and 2024 or more or less; neither does Mark Perry; neither does the BLS.
Thank you Gale for sharing this updated chart. The general trends remain, even if there was a notable spike in the prices of many goods and services in the wake of the COVID pandemic.
We become rich in two ways: 1) By raising our incomes and 2) By compressing the cost of goods and services. Too much attention is drawn to the former and not enough to the latter.
Note also that means of the goods that saw the greatest price declines, or time-cost declines, are imported. They take advantage of an efficient, global supply chain, to bring you the best possible product at the lowest possible price.
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Notice the things that got more expensive are the things the government pays for or subsidizes. Let's hope they don't create a "Department of TV and Electronics!
Nice chart, but it has one problem: the average hourly wage.
See that spike in 2020. No one's wages spiked in 2020. The spike is a compositional effect that happens in _unit value_ indices. We do not have price indices of wages; BLS does not produce or publish them. What we have are aggregations of unit values of remuneration. I do not know if and index of wages rose by 23.3% between 2020 and 2024 or more or less; neither does Mark Perry; neither does the BLS.
https://thomaslhutcheson.substack.com/p/improving-fed-decisions
Thank you Gale for sharing this updated chart. The general trends remain, even if there was a notable spike in the prices of many goods and services in the wake of the COVID pandemic.
We become rich in two ways: 1) By raising our incomes and 2) By compressing the cost of goods and services. Too much attention is drawn to the former and not enough to the latter.
Note also that means of the goods that saw the greatest price declines, or time-cost declines, are imported. They take advantage of an efficient, global supply chain, to bring you the best possible product at the lowest possible price.