U.S. inflation soared 7% in past year, the most since 1982

[peppertree]

Inflation jumped at its fastest pace in nearly 40 years last month, a 7% spike from a year earlier that is increasing household expenses, eating into wage gains and heaping pressure on President Joe Biden and the Federal Reserve to address what has become the biggest threat to the U.S. economy.

Prices have risen sharply for cars, gas, food and furniture as part of a rapid recovery from the pandemic recession that was fueled by vast infusions of government aid and emergency intervention by the Fed, which slashed interest rates.

As Americans have ramped up spending, supply chains have been squeezed by shortages of workers and raw materials.

At: https://apnews.com/article/consumer-prices-inflation-c1bfd93ed1719cf0135420f4fd0270f9

A shopper appears in a 1982 grocery store ad.

Though monthly inflation slowed to 0.3% in December, consumer prices in 2021 rose at their fastest annual rate since June 1982.

It was also the highest calendar year inflation since an 8.9% rate in 1981.

[Patterson]

1. And who was president in 1982?

[peppertree]

3. Well...

[SWBTATTReg]

2. I loved the hyperventilation here 'SOARED', a whole whopping 7%. Sure it's not good,

but when one considers the consumer environment that has been rippling through the markets (supply and demand), some disruptions are bound to happen. Some economists I've read don't seem to be freaking out. I'm not.

[peppertree]

4. Well said.

They should try living in Argentina for a while, with their 50% inflation.

I myself lived there when it reached 700% (i.e. prices rise 8-fold in a year). A lot of fond memories - but going into the stores, you basically just guessed what the prices might be.

That's high inflation.

[SWBTATTReg]

6. Thank you. You are absolutely right in pointing this out (the hyper-inflation) that are in some...

overseas economies. I do feel for these places, it's got to be a challenge to live in such times, when you literally don't know what costs will be until you grab the item and check it out in order to pay for it...it probably went up while you had the item in your shopping cart! That's bad indeed.

The one thing that I do see on a positive note, is that wages, real wages are now free of the republican stranglehold and real wages are going up, because the marketplace, because of tight supplies of labor, is forced to finally pay decent salaries. Finally!

Of course, wage increases are going to be uneven across the Country, but I think if a smart business wants to get workers, they are going to have to pay, and pay more.

I still see some small businesses moaning about paying higher wages, but I think that they are getting slammed right and left, especially when the easy solution is to simply give your workers better pay. I guess in the real world of business, they only think of keeping wages down while absorbing all of the increases in raw materials, etc. that have happened over the past decades (and yet no increases in wages). This seems to fit a certain category of business type, I wonder if anyone has done a study on it, I'd be interested in reading it.
Anyways, I think that businesses w/ this sort of negative attitudes about worker pay is going to suffer or go out of business, since they don't seem to truly appreciate their workers (and ironically enough, the workers know this too, by now, due to COVID).

[peppertree]

7. Absolutely. Real growth, even w/ some inflation, is always preferable to stagnant living standards

It's all a delicate balancing act, as you know.

My only real worry is that the Fed will use this as an excuse to ratchet up interest rates aggressively just before the midterms.

You'll recall that Alan Greenspin, famously, did that to Al Gore just before the 2000 election season.

There was practically no inflation in '99 - but he started raising rates like no tomorrow "just in case." It had politics written all over it.

And sadly for us all, it worked.

I have no doubt that cooling the economy in the 2nd half of 2000 was decisive in making it just close enough for Bush and Liver Lips to steal it.

Had the 2000 economy been like to the '99 economy (or close to it), Dubya wouldn't have stood a snowball's chance in a Texas summer.

[unblock]

5. Yeah, real gdp is up 5-6% for 2021 -- that's *after* adjusting for inflation

Real gdp was *down* 3.2% in 1982. A completely different situation

[peppertree]

8. Hear, hear

Inflation is ok, up to a point, as long as there's growth.

And though I do have fond memories of it, 1982 was definitely one of the most rotten years in the modern era - not just for the U.S. but for much of the world.

[progree]

9. Average real (inflation-adjusted) earnings of production and non-supervisory workers

80% of the workforce

http://data.bls.gov/timeseries/CES0500000032

2021 12 months in 1982-1984 dollars:
Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun Jul Aug Sep Oct Nov Dec
9.82 9.81 9.76 9.75 9.74 9.68 9.69 9.71 9.73 9.68 9.64 9.66

There's a graph at the above link.

Real earnings are NOT going up, though there was an uptick in December.

By the way, the December inflation was 0.5%,

Still a tick-down in size from October's +0.9%, and November's +0.8%

CPI NEWS RELEASE: https://www.bls.gov/news.release/cpi.nr0.htm


CPI DATA SERIES: https://data.bls.gov/timeseries/CUSR0000SA0
2021 12 months:
Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun Jul Aug Sep Oct Nov Dec
262.231 263.161 264.793 266.832 268.551 270.981 272.265 273.012 274.138 276.724 278.880 280.192
Nov->Dec:+0.4704% increase ( +5.79% annualized )