Sunday, April 17, 2022

"Americans should budget an extra $5,200 this year to cover rising prices, Bloomberg economists estimate"

 I'm guessing the "Fight For Fifteen" activists were not planning on the Biden/Harris/Klain/Obama administration kneecaping them in 2021 -2022.

Let's do the math, shall we? 
$15 x 40 weeks x 52 weeks/year = $31,200 so an additional $5200 = a 16.67% pay raise just to stay even.

There is a war on the working class.

From Business Insider via MSN, March 29 i.e. before the last, even higher, CPI print, 8.5%:

  • Inflation will cost the average US household an extra $5,200, Bloomberg economists said.
  • About $2,200 of that inflation tax will come from pricier food and energy, they added.

Americans haven't had to worry too much about factoring inflation into their budget for the past four decades. That's changing in 2022.

The red-hot inflation expected to last throughout the year will leave the average US household spending $5,200 more compared to the year prior, Bloomberg economists Andrew Husby and Anna Wong said in a Tuesday article. That boils down to an extra $433 per month on the same goods and services as last year.

Strong wage growth and excess savings from earlier in the pandemic will help soften the blow, but looming economic trends stand to worsen the inflation problem over the next several months, the team said.

"Accelerated depletion of savings will increase the urgency for those staying on the sidelines to join the labor force, and the resulting increase in labor supply will likely dampen wage growth," they said. In other words, as people spend their built-up savings, they'll need to go back to work, and employers won't have to pay as much to lure them back.

The estimate offers yet another bleak characterization of this year's sky-high inflation. Closely-watched inflation gauges like the Consumer Price Index have already shown prices soaring at the fastest pace since 1982. Inflation-adjusted wage growth was negative for most US workers last year, meaning their buying power weakened despite salaries rising at a historic pace. The economy is healing, but skyrocketing prices are making the recovery painful for nearly all Americans.

Food and energy costs, which includes gasoline and home heating, account for $2,200 of 2022's inflation, the economists said. That's poised to hit low-income Americans the hardest. Such households have the least savings to cushion against rising prices, and wage growth is expected to slow through the year as more people return to the job hunt. Even if the cohort's average wages climb a healthy 10% in 2022, food and energy inflation could fully offset their pay growth, the Bloomberg economists said....

....MUCH MORE

If interested see also any number of posts on Mr. Cantillon's revelation*:
Cantillon Effect: Why Wall Street Loves Fiscal Stimulus (and you should too)

That is, you should if you have financial assets.
If not, you're doomed to a life of poverty at whatever level the powers-that-be think they can get away with....

*****

*...The key episode in Cantillon's life was his involvement with John Law and his monetary schemes. Cantillon was opposed to the inflationist theories of Law, but he understood how the schemes worked and what their fatal flaws were. Thus, he was able to create a large fortune from the Mississippi System and South Sea Bubble. In the aftermath of these financial debacles, Cantillon wrote his famous Essai, breaking out of the muddleheaded mercantilist thinking of his day to make a pathbreaking contribution to our knowledge of method, theory, and policy. Shortly after writing the Essai, Cantillon was murdered under mysterious conditions, and his Essai remained unpublished for more than 20 years....
 
Here's their English translation of his "Essai sur la Nature du Commerce en General."