OT: International Energy Statistics ? ? ?

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DOE is now refusing to update this information . . . .

(not too different from when the Federal Reserve a couple of years or so stop publishing some if its monetary data just prior to the government flooding the economy with stimulus funds).

Reply to
CaveLamb
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Where did you hear that, Richard? Current data is updated through 3/31. That's ahead of the schedules for similar international economic data. Some of those figures aren't completed for a year.

Is this something you were told, or are you making the assumption based on the fact that April and May aren't available yet?

Reply to
Ed Huntress

What about information not changing? The other day I ran across an Enco book from 1999 and punched in a number of products on their site. Looks like almost double the price and the inflation rate seems to stay around 3%. I've asked you this before, but I guess it didn't sink in. 3% of 3% of 3% doesn't add up to double in a decade... Is it cause the real estate isn't worth anything close to 1999 levels?

Now that I don't smoke anymore I'm in shock over paying $2 for gum ! Cigs. are almost $10 a pack. You like this kind of stuff, so what gives? I think the inflation rate is a lie. Sure the tax rates are moved, but they don't move across the board to cover gum at the same rate as tobacco and gas.

Or soft drinks. I knew a guy who owned a bottling plant back in 1980 and he said it cost about 3 cents a can, what happened to sugar, water, and nitrogen?

SW

Reply to
Sunworshipper

I guess I missed what you were asking. It's a compound-interest problem: Not

3% of 3%, but rather 103% of 100%, compounded each year.

For example, with inflation of 3% per year, and starting with $100, the value at the end of one year is 103%. At the end of ten years it's $134.39. So something would cost roughly 134% of the original amount. In the 11 years since 1999, it's roughly 140% of the original. In 23 years, it's roughly double the original amount.

The actual inflation for consumer products form Dec. 1999 to May 2011 is

130%. But that's consumer products in general. Food and fuel screw up that "total" figure by quite a bit -- they swing up and down. And industrial products, like those from Enco, are on their own path, especially for a company like Enco which sells a lot of imports. I'd have to do some digging to find the appropriate number there. I hope you won't ask me to. d8-)

"Nearly double" doesn't surprise me much. I suspect that a lot of that is increased prices for industrial-product imports, but I don't know that for a fact. That's just a guess.

The influence there is indirect, but the effect of that should be a levelling or a decline in prices for domestic goods, along with an increase in prices for imports. But, again, that's just on basic principles. I haven't looked at the actual numbers.

'Don't know about gum, except that the gum companies have moved "up-market." They're charging premium prices and they're marketing their stuff as premium products. This started around ten years ago.

As for cigarettes, that's mostly excise tax increases, federal and state.

Inflation rates are some of the best, most scientific data we have for general economic trends. They're accurate, but you have to know what they're actually measuring. It's not simple.

Looking at individual products doesn't help, anymore than anecdotes help in any economic analysis. You notice the ones that have gone up the most, and there are a LOT of factors involved in pricing besides simple inflation.

For example, what do you think a car would have cost in, say, 1965, with six airbags, digital electronics controlling individual port fuel injection, and a turbocharger with an intercooler and computer-controlled wastegating? Not to mention Bluetooth, LCD displays, four-wheel disk brakes, a six-speed automatic transmission, etc., etc., etc. A 1965 car is not a 2011 car. That's a difficult problem to deal with when you're calculating inflation rates. The oranges can no longer be compared with oranges. Your oranges turn into Kiwi fruit over time, or something like that.

Sugar went 'way the heck up. You'd have to spend some time looking into that particular industry to get a handle on it. I used to do some of this with industrial machinery, but the game was up when everything went CNC. So I stopped trying. It was just incomparable. Meantime, productivity went 'way up, and in those terms, machine tools actually got cheaper.

Your questions are good ones, but they don't have simple answers.

Reply to
Ed Huntress

Thanks anyhow. Like your car comparison. Blue tooth..? Well I guess we could sell you a car from N.C. Saw a close to 1970 car for $25,000 in a car lot the other day.

SW

Reply to
Sunworshipper

There's a good example of something that you can't measure from inflation rates or by assuming rational behavior by consumers. A 1970 car's value is based on scarcity and emotional desires. They aren't building them anymore. It has nothing to do with inflation at all. Buying potatoes or blue jeans is different. And those are the kinds of things that go into inflation measurements.

Reply to
Ed Huntress

My bad.. I misread the chart.

Reply to
CaveLamb

Maybe he didn't see the scroll bar under the table which shows the other 80% of the info through 2011.

Go to one of the dollar stores for your gum, SW. Congrats to you, fellow non-smoker. If any enviroterrorists ever give you a hard time, ask them what they've done for the environment, then tell them you quit smoking and no longer pump CO2 into the air. This is especially handy if the idiots are smoking during their rants.

True, they don't. Higher costs one place end up raising prices for other stuff. Gas/diesel price increases raise gum prices. But the farkin' gov't doesn't count fuel price in the price index. Go figure.

Soda bottling plant unions, conveyor repairman unions, trucking unions, farmer unions, nitrogen bottling unions, etc., plus a wee bit of greed on the owners' part for each company.

I drink water, here and everywhere. They're not charging for it...yet. And it's far better on my teeth and stomach lining than sugary sodas.

-- "Human nature itself is evermore an advocate for liberty. There is also in human nature a resentment of injury, and indignation against wrong. A love of truth and a veneration of virtue. These amiable passions, are the latent spark. If the people are capable of understanding, seeing and feeling the differences between true and false, right and wrong, virtue and vice, to what better principle can the friends of mankind apply than to the sense of this difference?" --John Adams

Reply to
Larry Jaques

That's not the case, Larry. Just today, or yesterday, the Fed was talking about the CPI-U figure, which is "core" inflation plus food and fuel.

I think what gave this idea wings is that the press tends to focus on "core" inflation -- inflation without food or fuel -- because they know that food and fuel are volatile and largely beyond our control. Core inflation measures things that are priced with the influence of policy and the internal workings of our own economy.

Reply to
Ed Huntress

I quit cause I needed to and was rolling really cheap pipe tobacco for years. Some girl told me about the $ store after bitch'en in the store, now I hide it from my kid. Ole Ed is quick, I had to search for gum cause they changed the whole gum packaging scheme to look like your living in the future. Kinda like asking for a magic marker now days. I've done more than any of those "environ-mentals" ever dreamt of and don't feel guilty at all burning used oil for casting.

Been a year and what ever the date is now, but still think about it. If I quit any more vices I might as well cut my hair and start going to church. Cough

SW

Reply to
Sunworshipper

Nope, the W state just south of Da Yoopers. Dat's rite you's a Yooper, then you should see 'Escanaba By Da Moon Light' if you haven't already. It's on Hulu. They should tax brand new Cadillacs, sure are a lot up here. I wouldn't buy one, I'd be afraid it wouldn't let me out or let me go down certain roads. Or better yet, rat on me for thinking about smuggling cigs. Wait till they do that with booze, shouldn't be far off now in my wouldn't be surprised list.

Oh, that's for the mid grade brand.

SW

Reply to
Sunworshipper

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