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If box office is up 1% in revenues and inflation is 2.5% then box office is down.

Somebody mod that insightful.

The inflation rate in 2018 was 1.9% (this year, to Feb, was 1.5%) (ref: https://www.usinflationcalcula... ) So 1% increase in revenues is actually a downward movement, not up.

Since ticket prices have risen by more than 10% the nunber of butts in seats is down by more than 9%.

Yes, probably a better way to look at it. ticket prices are up. This site claims about a 5% rise in price 2017 to 2018 (44 cent rise in a year, on a ticket price of about 9 dollars): https://variety.com/2018/film/...

Your sin is cherry-picking. During the Obama years, purchasing power fell quite a bit.

In this particular case, I was responding to the previous poster's original comment. The comment was not about purchasing power under Obama, it was comparing the economy under Obama to the economy under Trump. Your comment does not do any comparison. My statement did: "There was no particular change in purchasing power between Obama and Trump-- the inflation rate stayed about the same."

If you're quoting the drop of purchasing power under Obama as a reason to say the economy is doing better under Trump than Obama, you must also look at whether purchasing power is dropping under Trump. That would seem obvious; I'm surprised you missed it.

For what it's worth, data is here: https://www.usinflationcalcula... Keep in mind Obama's first year in office is 2009, Trump's first year in office is 2017.

You're not a Leftist? Do tell... what are you, then?

A guy who likes numbers. And not vague opinions without numbers.

It's showing a programmer making $51.30/hour or $106,710/year (I'm assuming that's as a W-2 salary and benefits.)

I was a programmer in 2000 making $75K with benefits or $37.50/hour. (Metro Atlanta) That's $54.88/hour in todays money that's $109,760 a year. And according that website, the cumulative rate of inflation was 46% since then.

And the salaries for other things have fell behind too. I remember project managers getting over 90K back then.
I wasn't in Silicon Valley or anything, either.

I would expect much larger increases if there was truly a tech talent shortage.

The US dollar has also lost 90% of its purchasing power since 1950. The top marginal rate is therefore extracting twice as much wealth from the top earners as before. Taxes never go down.

A 74% inflation-adjusted increase since 2000 would be around a 150% raw increase.

That means the same service that cost you $100 in 2000 would cost you around $250 now.

If you believe that, I have some swampland in Florida that would be perfect for you.

You're right, don't believe that inlation since 2000 has been 100% (doubling the 74% post-adjusted increase as you have).

And I'm right. From 2000 to 2018 it was 44.5%.

I also don't believe your base rate, because there were a number of stories in 2016 reporting that the average had just crossed $100/mo.

And I'm right. In 2000 the average was reported to be about $40/mo.

That means that your numbers are indeed swampland-sales quality.

Sorry, I have to challenge you on a number of things about your post and the assertions within it - maybe you can provide some links to the analysis that you read to help provide some facts.

I don't think it's fair comparing Skylab to the ISS as you're comparing a short term outpost to a long term station. Skylab was occupied for a total 171 days with 3 astronauts - 513 days in operation at a cost (in today's dollars) of approximately $10B ($2.2B in 1975). That works out to $19.5M/astronaut-day in today's dollars. The ISS has a cost (so far) of $150B but has been in operation for over 17 years - let's say during that time there were only three astronauts on board, it works out to $8M/astronaut-day or about 40% of Skylab's per operating day cost. The longer the ISS stays up in it's present configuration (and you expand the calculation to include the number of days its had more than three astronauts), that number will be significantly less and continue to fall.

Sorry, NASA budgets have never approached DOD budgets - Take a look at the US budget for 1967 in which the major investments in Apollo was taking place:
  (http://federal-budget.insidegov.com/l/69/1967): "General Space, Science and Technology" (which I'm guessing is more than just NASA) is 7% of the budget while the DOD was 49%.

It's hard finding costs for Saturn boosters sans payloads, but I think you would find that their costs are very competitive compared to existing expendable launchers (as well as the space shuttle) and in the ballpark of the Falcon 9. What makes difficult to get apples-to-apples costs is that the Saturn V was not designed to deliver payloads into LEO - the third stage was used to achieve orbit as well as restarted to send the CM/SM/LM to the moon. Probably the best way to calculate costs per pound are to use the Saturn V first and second stage to put up Skylab as well as the Saturn IVB used to send the CM/SM to to Skylab.

The Skylab Saturn V first and second stage costs were $50M (in 1975 dollars) with a Skylab payload of 170,000 lb. which works out to $294/lb to LEO. The Saturn IVB which sent the CM/SM and consumables to Skylab cost $25M (in 1975 dollars) with a payload of 46,000 lb. which works out to $543/lb to LEO. I have a Time book on Apollo, from when I was a kid, in which the cost per pound for the Saturn V launch was stated to be $500/lb. - so these numbers seem reasonable. In today's dollars (using http://www.usinflationcalculat...), that's $1,347/lb for the Skylab Saturn V and $2,487/lb for the Saturn IVB. As a point of comparison, the Falcon 9 costs $1,240/lb. The Ariane 5, in its smallest/cheapest configuration is $4,700/lb.

The STS was a bad left turn for launchers and set the expectation that launch costs would be in the range of $10,000/lb or more. I think that was the real crime - the shuttle's costs got out of control very quickly and nothing was done to reign them in. If the decision was made to drop the STS and keep with Apollo technology (just like the Russians that continued working with their 1960s/1970s technology), which was proven, reliable and cheap compared to the resulting STS and expendable boosters costs, along with the same NASA budgets for space exploration, then I suspect a station of the ISS' capabilities could have been put up by the late 1970s as well as maybe an outpost on the moon by 2001 - and we would have avoided the long drought in government sponsored manned space exploration.

The price rise from $4,000 to $20,000

The Ford Maverick ($4000 in 1974) was not an entry level car. It was a high performance car. The Ford Focus ($20,000 now) is an entry level car

To get a real comparison, you would need to determine what 2017 car is the equivalent to the 1974 Maverick. I don't know.

However, according to http://www.usinflationcalculat... $4000 in 1974 would be almost $20,000 in 2017. I'm sure that whatever the equivalent 1974 car to the 2017 Focus was less than $4000.

I was very young when Star Wars, but I vividly remember that it cost $2.25. Plugging the values into the Inflation Calculator, I get a value of $9.04 today. I saw Hidden Figures last month and paid $9.00 for a ticket.

Minimum wage in 1977 was $2.31, or $9.29 inflation adjusted. Minimum wage as of January 1, 2017 - $10.00 Maybe movies just suck

According to ECON101, when demand outstrips supply, the price of a good goes up.

In this case, that means wages so I decided to take a look. According to the Federal Bureau of lagor statistics, STEM salaries grew at ~2% a year from 2013-2015 nationally. Meanwhile wages for "Computer Systems Design and Related Services" grew at ~2.3 a year. Inflation last year was 2.1% so if there is a STEM shortage, it must be very small.

In comparison if you are part of the ownership class, your NASDAQ index fund grew by 50%.

Anyone else have any good numbers to back up the anecdotes?

Thought experiment: You have a city with 100,000 people. That city has 20,000 good-paying jobs and 70,000 minimum wage scrub jobs available.

Explain to me how that last 10,000 even find a job? Or how those 70,000 low-paid workers suddenly find high paying jobs?

Of course that's an extremely simplified scenario but the unfortunate fact of our world is that there's a _lot_ more low paying jobs than there are high paying jobs, and there's a fair number more people than there are total jobs. "Just do better" simply doesn't cut it when you've got a pigeon hole problem at the fundamental level -- even if you manage to get a better job yourself that means, on average across the population, you just kicked someone else down to your prior shitty job.

I mean sure that sounds like a pretty pessimistic view, and in some ways it is, but its also a rather realistic one. The real kicker is that even if you pulled some magic out of your hat and suddenly the new minimum wage was $100k/yr, what you'd find is that the markets will relatively quickly adjust such that $100k is the new definition of "shitty job."

Growing the economy boosts the country in relation to other countries (or your city in relation to other cities or whatever scale you like to talk about) but it doesn't really do much internally because all aspects (again on average across the entire system) tend to grow at approximately the same rate.

The only way that quality of life gets to significantly improve for the people on the bottom is when technology improvements allow specific goods to drop in price relative to the economy's overall inflation rate (which could simply mean staying approximately fixed while inflation continues to increase.)

That's why "adjusted for inflation" is always mentioned when discussing historical prices. That $3000 XT my dad bought for our family back in the mid 80s would be almost $7000 now when adjusted for inflation (http://www.usinflationcalculator.com/ using 1985-2016,) and yet we can go out and purchase a machine thousands or millions of times better by all useful metrics for $700. That is, computers have dropped in price by around 90% relative to inflation over that period. That's great if you want to buy a computer! Which is why even people with shitty jobs can afford a basic PC or TV or such these days.

However, during the same period, a Big Mac has gone from about $1.60 to $3.80 on average (http://blog.cwpub.com/post/5179859473/big-mac-inflation) Which tracks much more closely (actually somewhat above) inflation for the same period (that inflation calculator puts it at $3.57.) That is, they can only afford 95% of what they could in 1985 with their inflation-adjusted dollar.

And those are numbers averaged across everybody. And that's the problem -- if everybody just went out and got a better-paying job, the net effect is an inflation on the economy and the entire bar moves up.

And yes, minimum wages and basic incomes and the like have the same inflationary effect, and they need to be constantly adjusted such that they track with inflation (well really the consumer price index, though the CPI itself tracks fairly close to inflation generally.) That's something we've been pretty bad at in many instances so you see cases where minimum wage is say, $5/hr for 15 years and then somebody realizes that its no longer even close to the poverty line and suddenly it becomes $15/hr with little to no warning and businesses get understandably pissed off.

Its much better if minimum wages are setup to track with inflation (required yearly review, or just flat out stated to increase yearly based on the CPI change or something similar.) But few jurisdictions do things like that, preferring to just set a fixed rate that sticks around until someone has an "oh shit" moment and forces a abrupt shift.

And wow, I haven't written a good wall of text like that in a while. Its even mostly on-topic!

• * Has the price of the stuff that YOU buy gone up or down?
• * Why did you buy that stuff?
• * What do you actually need to buy to survive?
• * What do you need to buy to be content?

In specific, only you can answer these questions. However, there are some common general trends:

• * The measure of inflation published by the US government: http://www.usinflationcalculat... will be different from the measure of inflation that you experience. The pressures to influence the rate of inflation published by the US government are different from the pressures that influence YOUR purchasing. A couple years ago, Forbes had an interesting opinion piece that pointed out some of the pressures on the US government to manipulate the published rate of inflation: http://www.forbes.com/sites/pe...
• * It is very hard to interpret the published US rate of inflation, because they change their methodology ALL THE TIME: http://www.bls.gov/cpi/cpi_met...
• * In general, these changes in methodology tend to minimize the published rate of inflation. Older methods, yield a much higher rate of inflation: http://www.shadowstats.com/alt...
• * If any of the things that YOU buy experience higher rates of inflation, then it's costs will dominate your budget. This is particularly compelling when the item is a non-optional part of your expenses, such as food, housing, clothing, medical, maintenance of income, community interaction, or interaction with family.

To add an insignificant personal data point, every time I have measured the increase in the expense of food, housing, medical or maintenance of income in the last 30 years, my results have traced the US methodology used back in the early '80s instead of current methodology. For the last 35 years, I have held jobs at the same university in the leading edge of IT. Back then, my monthly salary was about $35K. If my salary increases had matched the cost of living according to the methodology used in 1982, my current monthly salary would exceed $250K. The current actual costs of food, housing, medical and maintenance of income would be about the same percentage of my budget NOW as they were then. Instead, my salary has trailed the actual published inflation rate, and my current mandatory costs are crippling me.

I bet if we started stamping out fresh versions of the Liberator pistol, we could get 'em under $40 a pop. Actually, I just checked. In 1941 each liberator cost $2.10 to produce, according to Wikipedia. That's $34.49 in today's money, according to the inflation calculator at http://www.usinflationcalculat... So who's got a prize for George Hyde or his descendants?

A 2-3% pay raise is actually reducing your buying power year on year. That employee was getting severely underpaid for the position, it didn't even give them an increase for increased experience and being better at the job over time. You do realize that there is this thing called inflation? If you don't give people raises of at least that amount, then you are paying them less than the amount you paid last year, even if the raw dollar value is more.

http://www.usinflationcalculat...

It's because China is using a protectionist practice.

Western scholars figured out the problem with this practice hundreds of years ago. Problem is - it screws with your money supply something fierce. You end up having to radically manipulate your money supply, and you wind up with deflation and endless stimulus spending. Japan did the same thing in the 70's and 80's, and they've been paying for it over the last two decades (stagflation in the 90's-2000's, deflation since then.) China's turn is coming up soon.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

I'm happy to learn more about this, but I am a bit sceptical about your conclusions. (Not the least of which is the general religious undertone of economic schools of thought.)

Firstly, the US is mostly free trade, and yet we've had to do stimulus spending for the last six-or-seven years. I don't really see the difference on that dimension.

Secondly, although the US isn't in a deflation cycle, we *almost* are. Checking the monthly inflation rates shows negative inflation for several months of 2015, and fairly low inflation for the last couple of years. Despite massive stimulus spending, despite the government spending trillions more than revenue over the last decade, we're *still* not up to the generally-accepted-healthy value of inflation of 2.5%.

There's recent evidence that depression and deflation aren't empirically linked, so it's no longer clear to me that deflation is as bad as everyone makes it out to be.

And finally, your analysis may be correct but myopic in that it doesn't take into account other factors such as employment. The US could be in a good financial situation and also on the precipice of revolt. If enough people are unemployed and *can't* find a job, if enough people drop from middle-class to poor-class, then there would be a great deal of unrest.

We're 'kinda seeing that now. Productivity is up, overall profits are up, but for the vast majority of Americans wages have remained stagnant. All the profits go to the upper echelons, so it *seems* like we're doing fine financially when in reality a lot of people are miserable.

I'm not an economist, I'm only trying to figure out this stuff on my own. Some aspects of "current economic theory" don't seem to make sense.

Can you explain why unemployment (or more accurately, the labor force participation rate isn't a priority in your analysis?

I wonder why it's not mentioned. From Wikipedia, "the BAM's costs were estimated at $14 billion" at 1991 prices, and considering inflation, that would be 14*1.75 = $24.5 billions in today's prices. Other websites mention up to 2.35 ratio which will increase the cost to $33 billion.

Welcome to the concept of INFLATION. Compare your bill today to that from 1988 to one from today. It should have doubled. If it costs more than twice as much today (2016) than it did in 1988, then prices have gone up, relative to inflation. If it costs less than twice as much today as it did in 1988, then the cost has gone down. See this page infatlation calculator as my source.

I assume only long-term economic behaviors which have operated as such since hunter-gatherer man.

the reduction in unemployment you refer to are people settling for (two or three) jobs as unskilled labor

The reduction in unemployment is per-capita, and you don't get -3 unemployment for 1 person getting 3 jobs. Employment is a function of job availability, not a function of how job-ready the populous is; and job availability is a function of what the populous can buy.

My logic successfully and correctly predicts all gross economic behaviors throughout human history. Your arguments are idealistic platitudes. Particularly of note:

you assume all profits are fed back into the local economy

That's not what happens. Various economic factors drive prices down. Let's explore some.

Competition is the biggest one: either direct (food producers are *common*, so you can't overcharge on food without losing customers) or indirect (smartphones are more popular than Crocs, so you can't have that huge mark-up on Crocs and expect people to buy your product when they won't have money left over after buying a smartphone). Goods with bigger markets--more demand--are more ripe for competition; low-demand and low-flexibility goods and services (rental housing is a notable one; diamonds are another) aren't, and tend to hold bigger margins and drive off price competition more readily.

A special case of competition is supply-chain competition. When GM wants to build cars, they find a contract for, say, 100 million tonnes of steel per year for 5 years. There are a dozen steel mills with that kind of output. Say they each charge $500/tonne for steel. A steel mill makes that steel at a cost of $430/tonne. When approached, the steel mill goes back to the steel ore mine and the coal mine (you need coal to make steel) and negotiates for a contract for massive amounts of ore and coal to ensure it won't breach contract. The same process occurs: the costs of these things drop from $200 of coal per steel-tonne and $150 of ore per steel-tonne to something closer to the *labor cost* of those products. In the end, the steel producer gets his costs down to $230/tonne, and sells steel to GM for $232/tonne, netting a $200 million per-year profit (thanks to the coal miners and steel ore miners also cutting their margins razor-thin to capture a $200 million per-year contract for 5 years--a billion dollar sale they'd otherwise miss out on).

That kind of supply-chain contracting drives prices for things like cars and buildings down toward labor costs.

Market saturation is another factor. 1TB SSDs cost about $200 to make last year, but had a price of $700; now they carry a price of $330. All the early adopters have thrown in their money, buying up drives with huge margins; it's no longer **profitable** to charge those big margins, so Samsung et al have backed down pricing to capture the next rung of the market. The prices will eventually settle closer to labor cost.

Consumer resistance to inflation is another factor. Each year, the amount of income per production increases, causing a rise in prices; consumers dislike rising prices, and so will slow their purchasing. This causes downward price pressure. Manufacturers have attempted downsizing on goods they can't adequately cut prices on.

Let's take some real data.

The Consumer Price Index shows a general increase in prices per unit good of 0.8% across 2014 and 0.7% across 2015; the CPI for food shows food has inflated much faster than general inflation, at 2.4% and 1.9%, with home-cooked meals experiencing a 2.4% and 1.2% price increase (eating out became a lot more expensive in 2014--2.9% over the year).

The GDP per capita in 2013 was $52,607.9

Stop working for shitty salaries in overpriced cities and the executives running these corporations will stop expecting people to ruin themselves in order to bloat the executive bonuses.

When you're staring at the want ads, on line job sites, the newspaper jobs section and anything else you can think of to find a job because you graduated 5 months ago and you're still looking for something that pays more than minimum wage, you notice something very disturbing. There are literally thousands of job postings for minimum wage jobs, and almost no postings for anything that would be considered middle class or up (maybe 1 listing in 20). Just because we have low unemployment doesn't mean that underemployment isn't rampant as hell. Sure there are plenty of other places to work, but they all pay the same crap starvation wages. Starbucks still pays the same crappy wage so that those fortunate enough to have found a solid job don't have to pay too $4 for a latte (ohhhhh, never mind, they charge that much anyways). So, all of these employees on the bottom decide to collectively have themselves a strike. What would it accomplish? The powers that be just ride it out and wait 3 weeks. Those employees will be back, and willing to do absolutely anything because, as this person so ineloquently stated, no money, no eat.

The basic trouble with the labor market, is that workers do not have the luxury of simply not engaging in the market if the terms are unfair. The employer can file chapter 11 and shut their doors, or can wait out a strike, or can simply fire the employee and get another one. In short, they have options. The employees however are stuck with the tyranny of having a stomach and an undeniable need to put food in it with shocking regularly. In short, they have no options.

What happens at the negotiating table when one party A needs party B, but party B doesn't need party A? Party A gets hosed. The free market theory requires that all parties have the option not to take part if the deal is not in their best interest. With the labor market, that is not the case. Workers must earn money or die. Whether the employers know that when they set wages is irrelevant, as they take advantage of it to offer minimum wage jobs nonetheless.

12.7% of American workers make less than $10 per hour. 51% of American workers make less than $14.50 per hour. That means that the average American employee will not earn more than $14.50 per hour until they are 40 years old.

Since 1980, median individual income has risen from $20,500 per year to $27,000 per year, an annual increase of about 0.8% per year. Over that same period, inflation has averaged 3.37%. after 35 years of that, buying power is only 28% of what it used to be, and wages are only up 31%. This means that the total buying power of the median wage today is only 36% of the median buying power in 1980. In effect, wages have fallen to 1/3 of what they were in 1980. This is partly offset by a massive increase in the number of women who are working (2 income households), as well as a marked increase in the number of hours that individual employees are working.

As if that wasn't enough, we are fast approaching a debt crisis, as our debt to GDP is quickly approaching the highest in American history. We have been giving out massive tax break to the wealthy for almost 40 years, and financing it by going into nati

Let's see, gasoline costs 3 times as much, eggs cost double, bread is almost double.

At a rough 3% CPI index, it'd take 24 years for consumer prices to double. If that's the sort of time frame you're referring to, and your wages have risen only 25%, then yeah - you're getting screwed - but we already knew that.

According to US Inflation Calculator, the CPI has risen by 39.7% from 2000 to 2014. Note that this is an index; individual items may have a higher or lower inflation rate. That is why I mentioned a few specific products. When I entered the workforce after college, gasoline was about 90 cents a gallon; it's now $2.80.

Funny, for all those "crazy Government mileage requirements", I find that the cost of new cars has generally risen at slower than the rate of inflation, even as they offer more features, better reliability, and (thanks to said mileage requirements) lower fuel costs.

Case example: My parents bought a Geo Prizm LSi (also marketed as the Toyota Corolla) back in 1990. At the time, it cost ~$12.3K. It was much smaller than the current Toyota Corolla, the electrical system sucked (adjusting the power windows dimmed the headlights and radio), etc. The LSi add-on features (power windows) are all standard now, the MPG has gone from 21-22/26-28 MPG city/highway under the old system (that rated all cars better than what you'd actually get), to 27-29/36-38 MPG under the new, more realistic rating system (and remember, the car is actually bigger now than it was), which reduces your fuel costs by a third or so. Yes, the cost is up, between $19.5K and $22K for most models (remember, the 2015 low end model is still better on features than the top end model of 1990). But that $12.3K from 1990 is ~$22.4K in 2015 dollars (according to U.S. Inflation Calculator). So the price actually dropped in inflation adjusted dollars, while the car got bigger, more efficient, and got more "luxury" features.

Remind me how big bad government mileage requirements are making cars so expensive?

"You started at $40,000 if you had a degree in anything business. medical, or science related back then."

Simply, bullshit.

I graduated from high school in 1986, college (u of mn) in 1990 with a degree in international relations, with minors in German, geography, and European area studies, all of which at the time were considered desirable (if non specific) subjects. Minimum wage at the time was, iirc $4.25/hr. I started my first career level job in international business (specifically logistics) at $20k. I was delighted to make more than my age around age 27-28?

  To suggest that $40k jobs were falling like manna is just complete nonsense.

Yep

Ok according to http://www.usinflationcalculat... $20,000 in 1990 = $36,204.90

FYI inflation is not accurate anymore as it does not cover food, cost, insurance, and higher education costs! So in essence image in 1990 if $20,000 required 5 years of experience to top it off :-)

That my friend is what recent grads have to contend with plus $1,000 a month for a 1 room apartment in most metropolitan areas to top it off which is not counted in inflation

Ooh... You're close, but in fact the cumulative inflation rate for 2010 - 2015 was 8.5%, not 1000%.

After the crash? You make sure you have lots of guns and your food is locked down. Then lock n load because all starving impoverished libtard SJWs will be desperate and ready to kill anyone to stay alive. Well their fantasy will have dissolved right before them and it will be society's duty to "clean up the parasites"

Apropos of nothing, I note that we are in a deflationary cycle right now, for the first quarter of 2015.

Surprisingly, this little tidbit made hardly a ripple in the mainstream news outlets.

So... is this the recession that causes the crash, or will that be after the next recession?

The cost of living has gone up as well

Hardly. The cost of living in 1960 was $29.60, or, in today's dollars $236.74. The cost of living in 2014 is quoted as 236.736.

No surprise — the table I linked to was already inflation-adjusted. And, although "cost of living" and "inflation" are different things, they are tightly correlated.

cannot, in any way, be used as a measure of students intelligence or desire, capacity to learn

It surely can not — nor has there been any attempt made to use it as such. The point is, the price of a service quadrupled while the quality remained (or even degraded).

> in the last fifteen years the CDC budget has doubled

Think about the inflation when you provide numbers over 15 years. Since 2000, the budget is 188% bigger but inflation gives a 140% factor. The increase rate is given by (budget2000 - budget2014 * 140%) / budget2000 = 148%. Most increase is between 2000 and 2004 for NIH. After there is a decrease taking into account the inflation.

Yes, it's pricey -- $2500 gets a workable used car off the local Craigslist. However, it's crazy cheap, if you use the time machine in your brain to think about what the equivalent display would have cost (if it existed) one, five, or 20 years ago ...

In fact, $2500 is just about what Silicon Graphics' 1600SW (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SGI_1600SW) cost when it came out. And that was in 1998 dollars :) (According to this online calculator http://www.usinflationcalculat..., flawed as it is to compare tech items over time by clumsy measures of inflation, that would make it more than $3600 worth of monitor, then.) That is, $3654 *now* has about the purchasing power that $2500 did *then* ...

It is a good example of how that kind of "value of dollar" calculation is a poor measure for technology under rapid developement, though: the backwards calculation is nothing like equivalent. That is, a 17" LCD panel (ignoring things like that today you'd probably want HDMI or other modern input) with 1600x1200 resolution would *not* cost the "dollar equivalent of $2500," which works out to be about $1710 1998 dollars. More like ... what, $100-150? Seems fair; random Amazon hit does even better: http://www.amazon.com/Asus-VE2...

  Not to say that "anything in the now is cheap if the equivalent would have cost more at some point in the past when you were facing a different set of constraints" ... things are complicated. But calling this pricey is only true in relation to *other* things that have meanwhile hugely improved. For instance, it might not seem worth the price of 5 of these: http://www.amazon.com/PB278Q-2... ... unless 5K makes sense because it helps you resolve details on an X-ray or some other special purpose.

Do you understand the benefits of a union?

Classically speaking, unions existed to drive up benefits through threat of strikes or walkouts. In the 20's and 30's, unions were responsible for the 40 hours workweek, Saturdays off, and a living wage -- by preventing things like random firings and unpaid work (see 80 hour work weeks in the game industry).

To be clear, if individuals were better at negotiating wages, we'd see a rise in salary in the field, but according to statistics this is quite simply not the case. "Ah, but salary went up from 80K to over 100K you say", to which I agree, but if you adjust for inflation, you'll see that that $80K in 2004 is equivalent to $100K in 2014 (26.1%). In the same period, the tech heavy Nasdaq grew 143%. While some of this can be attributed to there being more people employed in the field, I doubt there 2.5x more CS graduates than there were ten years ago.

So while pay is still decent, there's still no rise in salary despite what many consider an obvious shortage in the field. If more CS majors studied those useless fields like "history", we'd have a union and there wouldn't be a bunch of indentured servants known as H1Bs driving wages down (by artificially inflating the labor pool with people who can't quit).

- Studies estimate the 2012 minimum wage should be $10.52: http://www.cepr.net/documents/...
- Average inflation rate for US is 2-3%: http://www.usinflationcalculat...
- If they set it to $11/hr now, 2015-2020 = 5 years @ 3% inflation, $11 * 1.15 = $12.65. $15/hr is a bit high.

Both of my in-laws own small businesses. True small businesses with less than 10 employees and their takehome pay combined is about the median income of the average US household. They both would have to close shop if this happened. Good luck to small business owners in Seattle.

Mega-corps in Seattle I have no doubt will find a way to abuse this.

Even if we disregard the fact that you're pulling numbers out of your ass, you're off by nearly 30% in your calculations based on your made up numbers!

You can't just use minimum wage like that because it isn't directly tied to inflation, or to the more appropriate Consumer Price Index. http://www.usinflationcalculat...

And that doesn't isn't even that tied to the durability of the car, which would include repair and upkeep costs as well as life expectancy!

And besides all that, your math is horribly inaccurate!
$15,080/$4,160 * 2500 = $9062.5 for a minimum wage job according to your math.

Actually, all of those numbers are right from Google. There are 2,080 work hours in a year. But you are correct, minimum wage has not kept up with inflation, which is part of the problem with the economy.

Even if we disregard the fact that you're pulling numbers out of your ass, you're off by nearly 30% in your calculations based on your made up numbers!

You can't just use minimum wage like that because it isn't directly tied to inflation, or to the more appropriate Consumer Price Index. http://www.usinflationcalculat...

And that doesn't isn't even that tied to the durability of the car, which would include repair and upkeep costs as well as life expectancy!

And besides all that, your math is horribly inaccurate!
$15,080/$4,160 * 2500 = $9062.5 for a minimum wage job according to your math.

Inflation since QE has not been outside historical levels. QE started around late 2008.

A lot of that "consistency" is due to tweaks in the CPI in 1980 and 1990... Adjusting for those calculation tweaks we see that inflation is actually quite high, nearing 9% on the historical record, not the claimed 2%.

Inflation since QE has not been outside historical levels. QE started around late 2008.

Bitcoin uses a different philosophy. The below is pretty rough, as I've just started to understand it all myself.

Fiat currencies as we have them right now are unlimited money related to limited resources. If the number of goods in the economy grows, the money can grow as well, keeping it balance. But it doesn't have to, it can also grow slower or faster. In general, it grows faster, creating inflation.

Gold or other backed currencies were limited money related to limited resources. They would grow if the amount of gold (or whatever) grew, so the expansion of money was largely unrelated to the changes in the overall economy, which is pretty bad, but worked for a while because the amount of gold was not growing or shrinking dramatically. Until the spanish hauled it home by the boatload from the New World.

Bitcoin is the strange new beast: A limited amount of money related to a limited resource, but with a well known growth potential and limit. While also unrelated to the currency, this means that it is not erratic. It also tends towards deflation rather then inflation. Once the financial sector, which is built entirely on inflation, catches on, I wouldn't be surprised if there were a couple of fatal accidents. Bitcoin isn't undermining any particular currency, it is undermining the currency system.

And yes, the economic danger with Bitcoin is that as it becomes more valuable over time, hoarding it can be more profitable then investing it. Our current economic system is fueled by inflation because for the rich, investing is more profitable than being Scrooge McDuck. However that same system continuously shafts the non-rich, i.e. the 99%. If we had constant deflation instead of constant inflation, saving up for your retirement, or house, or car, would be so much easier.

Imagine you had started to work in 1950. You'd be about ready to retire. The accumulated inflation between 1950 and today is 870.4%. The first years of savings you may have accumulated are worth about 10% of what you put in today. Interest is the only thing saving your day. The game worked well for a couple decades, but interest rates have been laughable for a decade now with inflation staying largely constant.

Make no mistake. Inflation is not your friend if you aren't super-rich. A currency that won't inflate will have a dramatic impact on our economic system. What exactly remains to be seen, but at least the old games won't work anymore.

$60k for someone straight out of school is goddamn ridiculous - H1B competition or not. Talk about a sense of fucking entitlement.

You just got out of school. You are on the Bottom. not the middle, not the top, the Bottom. Thats where you start. And the bottom is a lot lower than $60k.

Really?

In 1990, my first job out of school (bachelor's degree) job paid $35K/year (this was a midsized midwestern city, not a major IT market), which is $62K in today's dollars. Has starting pay degraded so much that current grads expect less than that?

Nope. $666.66 in 1976 dollars is worth about $2,724.41 today.

http://www.usinflationcalculator.com/

Remember when those same publishers got rid of big boxes, printed manuals and goodies that used to come in normal pc game editions -- with the excuse of going green and lesser price ? Yeah, what happened to those prices ? They went up, up and up. And you ended paying much more for less.
It is GUARANTEED that if second hand games go the way of the dodo prices will not go down.
You'll end up paying much more for even less value.

Anyone can look at the printed tag and see that the numbers are different. Compare todays prices with yesteryears and adjust for inflation, and the picture is a bit different.

Some examples:

The NES, released in 1987 for $99.99 is $230.52 in todays dollars. Assuming games were $40, that's $92.21 per game.

The SNES, released in 1991 for $199.99 is $337.14 in todays dollars. Games were ~$60, which is about $101.64 today.

The Sega Genesis, released in 1989 for $189.99 is $351.80 in todays dollars. Similar to the SNES for games.

Sony Playstation, released in 1994 for $299.99, is $309.81 in todays dollars. That $50 Final Fantasy VII disk would set you back $77.86 today.

N64, released in 1996 for $199.99, is $292.65 today. $60 for a game would be 87.80 today.

Given a more apples-to-apples comparison, you can see that the NES and SNES were very expensive. While the hardware is in line with the WII at launch time, the games could very well break the bank. You also see that the N64, while being a lot more powerful and still cartridge based, was still significantly cheaper in adjusted dollars. The Playstation CD's, which we all know cost less to mass produce, were cheaper still. Today we could go and get that new AC, Forza, Gears, or DmC disk for x360 or ps3 for ~60 brand new. Tell me how $60 is more expensive than $102 again?

And according to this page, it would cost $11.000 in today's money. Which is not that cheap ...

I have been playing the wii up to now. I am actually interested in the Wii U. But the price is just too high for me to get it.

370 bucks for a gaming system with one game. Then each subsequent game is $60 new, $50 preowned. I am going to pass on that.

For comparison the wii launched at $250 and games were less than $50. 20% jack up in 7 years is too much. according to [1], inflation since the wii launch is only 14%. So definitely, the price rose.

[1] http://www.usinflationcalculator.com/

Current Interest Rate = 0.25% http://www.worldinterestrates.info/
Current Inflation Rate = 2% http://www.usinflationcalculator.com/inflation/current-inflation-rates/

And the words "fiscal cliff" has nothing to do with this?

The problem is that they're expecting a renewed recession when taxes go up and government spending goes down. The government will be taking more money out of the economy and putting less into it.

Anybody as freaked out by current government borrowing as you describe is simply being hysterical. Sure the deficit at a historical high in absolute terms, but its nowhere near a historical high as percent of GDP. On top of that the government is currently borrowing money at or below the rate of inflation. It'd be insane not to borrow when people are in effect *paying* us to hold onto it for them. Check out the recent ten year treasury rate and compare it to inflation.

No business would worry about borrowing money at an interest rate below what it can earn by holding onto the cash it already has. That's why *every* large business borrows money, even when it's profitable. It's counter-intuitive if you think of business and government budgeting like they were normal household budgeting, but business and governments aren't like typical private households. Even wealthy *individuals* borrow money when the interest rates are favorable. I once had a wealthy young trust fund kid working for me who borrowed money from the bank to buy a yacht. It made no sense for him to liquidate his investments when those investments earned more than the bank's interest rate.

There's a time to worry about government borrowing, and that's in a full economy where dollars in the private sector are creating jobs like crazy. Nobody seems to worry about austerity then, when interest rates are high, but they should. But when interest rates are low, suddenly people freak out about borrowing money. It's hysterical fear, that's all.

Yeah, because the federal government has been so much better at keeping its fiscal house in order.

The highest debt per capita of any state in the country is Connecticut at $5,402.

The per capita debt of the federal government is $51,654.92 or more than 9 times as much.

Total spending per capita in the United States has gone from $6,339.90 in 2000 to $11,194.30 in 2010. The inflation adjusted increase was 39.4%.

California and Illinois are acknowledged fiscal basket cases - the inflation adjusted per capita increase in spending in those two states from 2000 to 2012 were 42% and 57% respectively. The median state (Michigan at #25) had a 38% increase - slightly better than the US.

Let's just say that neither level of government has been fiscally responsible. All of these figures are increases per capita - more money being spent per person - which means even if everyone (including the rich) was pitching in like it was the height of the dot-com bubble we'd still be under water.

he bailed out the people who flushed the economy down the toilet

No... that was his predecessor.

continues to support printing money as economic stimulous [sic] which drives up inflation

inflation has barely budged...in fact, it's lower now than it was before the recession started

see the pretty picture? it actually is a pretty picture, i'm not being snarky...

enacted policies which tripled deficit spending

actually, that was Congress, but i'll grant you that as a half point

FAILED to close GITMO, EXPANDED govt wiretapping programs

true and true, and don't forget that he's also a lot LESS transparent though he promised more transparency. Big FAIL, and the reason i seriously looked at Romney.

did exactly what I said he would do concerning unemployment

you said he would triple unemployment...it didn't even go up another 33% from when he got in office and most of that was momentum as we plunged into the recession. unemployment is now right back down to where it was when he took office... so no, it didn't.

I can't stress enough how important it is to keep looking at facts and drop the fox news line.

More citations for the inflation from the top hits on Google.

http://www.westegg.com/inflation/infl.cgi
http://www.usinflationcalculator.com/
http://www.dollartimes.com/calculators/inflation.htm/
http://www.coinnews.net/tools/cpi-inflation-calculator/
http://inflationdata.com/Inflation/Inflation_Calculators/Inflation_Rate_Calculator.asp

So, please cite your source.

Why make a comparison with an event 15 years ago and ignore the different in value of the dollar?

Intels FDIV bug costs of $475M in 1994 is equivalent to $735M in today's dollars. I guess it's just not as impressive as saying "The cost of this glitch was a bit over half of the $475 million charge Intel took for the Pentium FDIV Bug."

If you want to make it sound more impressive, go back further in time "This loss was greater than the entire GDP of the united states in 1955 (ignoring adjustments for inflation)"

Unless you're relatively young, you should remember a time when the average working parent could support a spouse and a family with children. Right now, the average working person can barely support him/herself with one job.

Fair enough. But I don't see any connection between that and the rich getting richer. I blame that on the horrible inflation; according to this site the US dollar is worth around 1/7 as much as it was when I was born. That means that if a family was living on $20,000 per year when I was born, a similar family would need to make $140,000 now to have the same buying power.

Of course that oversimplifies; no amount of money would buy a smart phone or a laptop computer in the year I was born, and both are available rather cheaply these days. But inflation is the key to your complaint, not "the rich getting richer".

Quantitative Easing printed vast amounts of new money; inflation, pure and simple. The massive borrowing of the US government also leads to inflation. Corn subsidies for ethanol have led to an increase in food prices generally. The increasing costs of fuel are making everything more expensive. None of this has anything to do with "the rich getting richer".

You're probably solidly in the "upper middle class"

Possibly. I didn't want to look up exactly where the class boundaries fall, and my basic point remains: I am not "the rich" and "tax cuts for the rich" will not directly benefit me.

steveha

food prices are way way up if that's what you're wondering.

But as for my data, the cumulative inflation from 1975 to 2010 is about 310%. the following sites all come up with roughly the same number:

http://www.inflationdata.com/
http://www.usinflationcalculator.com/
http://www.bls.gov/data/inflation_calculator.htm

(if you do it for 2011 it works out to about $4.20)

USD is currently experiencing a 10% inflation. Since the bulk of inflationary pressures caused by the US Gov spending was expected to kick in throughout 2011, it's only expected to get worse.

I have no idea where you're getting that number, or that suggested cause, but neither of them are even remotely correct. My guess is the rantings of some TV personality, but you and other readers need to know that it's pure nonsense.

The 12-month price change index (one of the more common measures of inflation) is close to 2.7%, slightly higher than normal but not really out of whack given the huge sums of money destroyed when the real estate market crashed. As far as government spending, in the last year the federal government went from spending about $3.6 trillion in 2010 to spending about $3.7 trillion in 2011 (both of those figures include Social Security and Medicare, which are not part of the general fund). That's an increase that's actually slightly less than inflation.

The first chart also has a clear answer on what is inflating, although it doesn't add up close to the suspiciously round 10% you cited: Gas prices are much higher in the US than they were a year ago. The most likely reason for this appears to be oil speculators buying up futures in anticipation of the Libya War causing supplies to drop. An increase in the price of crude would also cause a price increase in industrially-produced food, which we're also seeing. But that's different from having $1 today worth only $0.91 next year.

Calculating US Inflation from 2000 to 2010, one would be left with a 26.6% increase. Since I am feeling friendly, going from 1999 to 2011 brings it to 32.8%.

$6.7 billion * 1.328 = $8.9 billion

The population changed from 281,421,906 to 308,745,538 (a 9.7% increase).

$8.9 billion * 1.097 = $9.76 billion

We're still left with ~$4 billion (~30%) looming around to qualify as soaring costs.

They have managed to turn the free airways into the most expensive form of communication ever.

The Pony Express (US, 1860-1861) charged $5 per 1/2 ounce (about two sheets of paper?), with a ten day delivery time from the East to Sacramento California. Two sheets of paper is probably good for 2000 words or (let's say) 20,000 characters = 200 Kbits. So the data rate was 20 k bits/day or 1/4 bit per second - not counting local pick up and delivery. Cost per k bits was 40 cents, so cost per MB was $400 in 1860 dollars. The only inflation calculator I found only went back to 1913. $400 in 1913 dollars is about $8500 now.

A monthly cap of 500 MB would cost $425,000 via Pony Express.

So, I would argue that the Pony Express was substantially more expensive. :D

That was also merely the point-to-point transit cost (equivalent to the backbone), so one must add on local collection and distribution costs (the ISP) , probably another couple of 1860 bucks.

I've heard stories that at least at one time or another the Manhattan project consumed as much as half of the GDP for the entire United States

You heard wrong. The Manhattan project cost around $2,000,000,000 in 1940s dollars. The US GDP in 1940 was right around $100,000,000,000.

This is why the people that say we need a "Manhattan project" for green energy have no idea what they are talking about. The US Department of Energy has an annual budget that's pretty damn close to what the Manhattan project cost when adjusted for inflation. This site says that $2,000,000,000 in 1945 dollars is worth $24,000,000,000 and change. DoE's FY2009 budget was $24,100,000,000.

All that notwithstanding, the Manhattan project did have some impressive statistics in other areas. Picking one off the top of my head, the uranium enrichment plants consumed around 10% of the total electrical production for the entire United States.