Quote:
Originally Posted by After Shock Media
Well for me the following is up (rough percentages)
Red meat: 60%
Pork: 50%
Chicken: 45%
Lettuce & other greens: 70%
Bread, rice, grains: 50%
Milk: 25%
Eggs: 40%
Pasta: 30%
Hell our food costs have gone from about 125.00 a week to 200.00 a week (not including eating out) and if I recall food costs account for like 15% of household spending while gas is only like 5%. That of course is just food and not increased costs in nearly everything else too from natural gas to the damn cost of household paint. Only real benefit is electricity and that is just because our city produces it own via the damn.
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But, but, wait a moment US goverment says that inflation is around 3-4% only .....
and
"Bill Gross, the manager of Pimco Total Return, the nation's largest bond fund, refers to the CPI as a "con job" that deliberately understates the price pressures faced by Americans in order to keep Social Security payments and other government costs pegged to the index unduly low.
In a report about the CPI, he noted that some of the adjustments don't accurately reflect how much consumers pay for goods. Pimco estimates that the changes have shaved more than a percentage point off the CPI.
"Did your new model computer come with a 25% discount from last year's price?" Gross wrote. "Probably not. What is likely is that you paid about the same price for memory improvements you'll never use."
Another flaw with the CPI numbers is that the government now assumes that higher prices for one item will lead consumers to buy more of a substitution item. That may be true. But if people buy fewer steaks and more hamburgers, for example, it's unrealistic to say that inflation isn't a problem, skeptics maintain.
"The government can claim there's no inflation but all they're measuring is a reduced standard of living," argues Peter Schiff, president of Euro Pacific Capital, an investment firm specializing in overseas investments.
With all this in mind, California economist John Williams argues that CPI is understating inflation by at least 3 percentage points and perhaps as much as 7 percentage points. So instead of an annual inflation rate of 4%, the true number could be between 7% and 11%."
from:
http://biz.yahoo.com/cnnm/080514/051308_misery.html