For luxury goods (cars, tvs, etc) yeah the old prices are never coming back, but if the economy craps out promos & sales will be larger. My buddies complain how much Milwaukee tools have gone up, some double in 4yrs, I tell them yeah its never going back.
Groceries are pretty stable but only because of shrinkflation; ice cream < 1/2 gallon, canned goods < 16oz, cereal boxes shrank, chip bags OMG theres nothing in there, waiting for 12oz & 2L soda shrinking.
Real estate has been dropping more in some markets than ever. Really hope nothing close to 2007-10 happens where 1/2+ of housing values gone.
Lower income wages have gone up a ton while others have not, 4ish years ago supermarkets, gas stations, fast food, very few started $10/hr. Now they can not hire people unless its $16-20/hr. With all the service wages going up a lot, then the price of everything will stay high, cause it will be very hard to ever lower those wages.
Plus you have to many dummy millennials living in their parents basement working some gig economy job on an irregular basis with no money.
But I think the economy is going to be very interesting once 1/2 the boomer population is gone, as the boomers generation starts to disappear I think the economy is going to struggle, thats in what 15 years? Part of what drove some of the luxury spending during the pandemic was all the old people dying of covid and then their kids spending the inheritance, my theory at least.
Quote:
Originally Posted by ASAP
You guys are aware that if the RATE of inflation slows... that doesn't decrease the prices, right? It just decreases the rate of growth... unless deflation happens (which is typically thought of as a bad thing), we are all poorer than we were a year ago, 2 years ago or 3 years ago... that is unless somehow your wage growth kept up or outpaced inflation. In most people's cases across the country, wage growth fell way back... so we are going to always be stuck with higher prices than before unless some mass contagion happens with layoffs, a total banking crash or something else.
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