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If the CPI is supposed to measure consumer goods pricing, it seems silly to strip out both food and energy. Who cares if food and energy are affected by commodity prices.
SS COLA at 2.8%, but meanwhile Health insurance gaps up at double digits each year.
If the CPI is supposed to measure consumer goods pricing, it seems silly to strip out both food and energy. Who cares if food and energy are affected by commodity prices.
SS COLA at 2.8%, but meanwhile Health insurance gaps up at double digits each year.
Me thinks the US uses the wrong measuring stick.
Here's a couple of double digit Medicare increases coming in 2026:
AARP Article:
Part B premium is projected to jump 11.6 percent, $21.50, to $206.50, the Medicare trustees reported in July. That would raise the Part B annual deductible by 12 percent, $31, to $288 in 2026.
No I don't, not the numbers in the Wolf Street piece. From that writing:
Overall CPI rose by 0.31% (+3.8% annualized) in September from August. So not a benign inflation reading, but the second worst since January.
The eight M/M CPI changes since January, in descending order since January are: 0.444% (Feb), 0.341% (June), 0.311% (April), 0.287% (Aug), 0.254% (Sept), 0.225% (Mar), 0.209% (May), 0.151% (July).
As it turns out, 0.310% is the M/M seasonally adjusted increase for Sept. But the writer does his best at directing you away from adjustments. A commenter says that BLS didn't release seasonally adjusted figures; the writer posts a response but doesn't correct this part of the comment. Perhaps ironically, the only M/M figures in the BLS press release are those that are seasonally adjusted.
BLS press release My figures are calculated from monthly seasonally adjusted and unadjusted CPI values as posted by the BLS.
As far as OER is concerned, it looks like the writer was confused about what it represents. He wrote:
OER is a stand-in for the costs of homeownership. OER indirectly reflects the expenses of homeownership such as homeowners’ insurance, HOA fees, property taxes, and maintenance. It’s the only measure for those expenses in the CPI. It is based on what a large group of homeowners estimates their home would rent for, with the assumption that homeowners would try to recoup their cost increases by raising the rent.
Suppose a homeowner, renting out their home, is netting $100/mo in profits (i.e. rent minus expenses), e.g. $2100 rent - $2000 expenses. Then if expenses go up 10%, the owner will only raise the rent enough to maintain that $100 profit. The owner will charge $2300 in rent (with $2200 in expenses). That is, the owner will increase the rent by $200, or by just 9% (of $2100), even though inflation is running at 10%. No wonder the writer thinks the OER is rigged. He's got the definition wrong.
OER is, as he wrote "based on what ... [a] home would rent for". That's what the market will bear. If an owner's costs go up, they might eat some of those costs (as sellers are currently doing with tariffs), they might just try to recoup those costs (as the writer claimed), or they might try to pad their profits (if housing is in short supply and renters are expecting large hikes in rent). Whatever the rent increase is, it is only loosely coupled to costs (expenses).
See Ken Perry's comment in the cited piece.
Side note: my home is assessed for property taxes according to OER, not comparable sales. So this is of more than academic interest to me. While the method used to calculate my OER is different from the BLS's (my municipality looks at rents in comparable buildings), and the city calculates a figure per building, not an aggregate for the region, the idea is similar.
I think BLS said that data collection stopped with DC shutdown on 10/1/25. BLS only recalled CPI data analysts who used the data on hand as of 10/1/25. These data analysts didn't try to complete any surveys in progress or collected any new data. IMO, the analyst team could have just stayed home and the widely estimated +3.1% wasn't that bad.
Thanks for the dose of reality. What have you got on the shrinkflation of Three Musketeers Bars and the disappearance of 50 cent burgers at local lunch counters? .
1964 to 1974 isn't much time to a kid looking back from my vantage point I guess.
The first thing that happened was the local Ben Franklin that sold them went of business. I just remember them becoming very hard to find anywhere. This was shortly after the time Franklins, Kennedy's, Mercurys, Roosevelt's and any other silver coins disappeared, along with silver certificates.
Comments
It's going to be a long time before we see inflation at 2% again.
Y/Y trend:
April: 2.3%
May: 2.4%
June: 2.7%
July: 2.7%
Aug: 2.9%
Sept: 3.0%
Source: BLS CPI-U database https://data.bls.gov/toppicks?survey=cu
SS COLA at 2.8%, but meanwhile Health insurance gaps up at double digits each year.
Me thinks the US uses the wrong measuring stick.
BTW, SSA increased the wage-cap by +4.77% due to higher wage growth.
AARP Article: Article:
https://aarp.org/medicare/medicare-part-b-premium-increase-2026/
https://wolfstreet.com/2025/10/24/massive-outlier-in-owners-equivalent-of-rent-pushed-down-cpi-core-cpi-core-services-cpi-something-went-awry-at-the-bls/
No I don't, not the numbers in the Wolf Street piece. From that writing: The eight M/M CPI changes since January, in descending order since January are:
0.444% (Feb), 0.341% (June), 0.311% (April), 0.287% (Aug), 0.254% (Sept), 0.225% (Mar), 0.209% (May), 0.151% (July).
As it turns out, 0.310% is the M/M seasonally adjusted increase for Sept. But the writer does his best at directing you away from adjustments. A commenter says that BLS didn't release seasonally adjusted figures; the writer posts a response but doesn't correct this part of the comment. Perhaps ironically, the only M/M figures in the BLS press release are those that are seasonally adjusted.
BLS press release
My figures are calculated from monthly seasonally adjusted and unadjusted CPI values as posted by the BLS.
As far as OER is concerned, it looks like the writer was confused about what it represents. He wrote: Suppose a homeowner, renting out their home, is netting $100/mo in profits (i.e. rent minus expenses), e.g. $2100 rent - $2000 expenses. Then if expenses go up 10%, the owner will only raise the rent enough to maintain that $100 profit. The owner will charge $2300 in rent (with $2200 in expenses). That is, the owner will increase the rent by $200, or by just 9% (of $2100), even though inflation is running at 10%. No wonder the writer thinks the OER is rigged. He's got the definition wrong.
OER is, as he wrote "based on what ... [a] home would rent for". That's what the market will bear. If an owner's costs go up, they might eat some of those costs (as sellers are currently doing with tariffs), they might just try to recoup those costs (as the writer claimed), or they might try to pad their profits (if housing is in short supply and renters are expecting large hikes in rent). Whatever the rent increase is, it is only loosely coupled to costs (expenses).
See Ken Perry's comment in the cited piece.
Side note: my home is assessed for property taxes according to OER, not comparable sales. So this is of more than academic interest to me. While the method used to calculate my OER is different from the BLS's (my municipality looks at rents in comparable buildings), and the city calculates a figure per building, not an aggregate for the region, the idea is similar.
Prices for regular editions, by year and publisher:
1964 to 1974 isn't much time to a kid looking back from my vantage point I guess.
The first thing that happened was the local Ben Franklin that sold them went of business. I just remember them becoming very hard to find anywhere. This was shortly after the time Franklins, Kennedy's, Mercurys, Roosevelt's and any other silver coins disappeared, along with silver certificates.
Inflation scares the hell out of me.
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/what-happens-when-no-one-trusts-a-countrys-economic-data