Rates were higher when Yellen left her post than when she began. And inflation was under 2 %. She did a great job.

The fed has an interest in keeping inflation low. The government( as the worlds largest borrower) has an interest in higher than expected inflation. Doh!

I don't care if you think I'm a dick. I have a degree. Which extends into upper level macro. You seem to be kind of illiterate.

Your original post was misinformed (QE being a new tool when conceptually it wasnt). The last post is largely misinformed. It isn't about what you learn in textbooks. Go look at how agencies like the BLS are measuring inflation. Like what's in their CPI.

No real economists with PHDs will look at you with a straight face if you say the price of music falling because technology should be accounted for. It's beyond dumb when you talk about actual inflation.

Okay mate. You started this with "measuring inflation is easy" which is ****ing ******ed on the face of it. This is also the second debate whete youve had to appeal to your qualifications to justify your terrible takes on economics.

So you have what qualifications do you have when talking about inflation? You don't even understand that technology lowering the cost of music has no place in discussions about inflation. You can go check out the BLS site, like I recommended, and see you don't have any idea what you're talking about.

Given Paul D's trackrecord of combining 1. smugness 2. being wrong, and 3. a complete unwillingness to engage (beyond mentioning his degree)... I should have stuck with my original comment - i.e. **** off.

For anyone else who is interested in how to measure inflation under a rapidly changing technology. Have a look at the below.



Found here

https://www.forbes.com/sites/vincent.../#2d68edf3740f

along with this discussion

Next up we have the Chief Investment officer of blackrock talking in simple terms about the same issue.

https://www.cnbc.com/2017/06/28/tech...ks-rieder.html

With the chart




So theres two major points here.

1. That different segments in the economy are changing prices in very different ways. A single number doesn't capture that.

2. There are significant difficulties in measuring price changes when quality changes so dramatically.

Against all of this, we have monetary policy that "should" be increasing inflation, but all we are seeing is a dramatic rise in asset prices.

A few other interesting articles.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/periann.../#1ef7553e200b

On why CPI is an opaque number, that the government, and their economists have a big incentive to fudge (or at least - not rock the boat)

https://www.forbes.com/sites/greatsp...led-inflation/

How the internet economy killed inflation

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/05/u...inflation.html

President of the Reserve Bank making the same point.

Lol - hilariously. I wrote the above before I saw your latest response.

Sure buddy. Lets discuss our degrees in a dick measuring competition. Sounds fun.

So you're a cherry picking artist who has anti-government tendencies. lol nice. No, economists at government agencies don't have an incentive to lie. That's conspiracy hogwash.

I was directly addressing you're pea-brain analysis about music technology lowering cost. Not technology lowering costs on every day items that people purchase like your chart shows. Minus a few things as they're not necessities. Most people aren't going to purchase umpteen cellphones per year. If Technology lowers fuel costs and healthcare costs, you may have a point. But that's not what you were talking.


ps. Also lol citing a peon who contributes but isn't part of Forbes who also cannot spell mystery.

So the only ideas worth discussing come from people with degrees and credentials. Cool.

Like. I know these posts stand on their own, but seriously, contribute something or **** off. What are you getting out of this discussion?

Regarding the music discussion... Examples. How the **** do they work? Not only is entertainment/music absolutely including in inflation indexes (albiet as a tiny part of the basket) but its obviously just an example of a wider trend.

I've seen that chart pushed by Cato type guys without the obvious explanation. The Cato explanation is that free trade pushed down the costs off all the things that are lower than inflation while protectionism is the cause of the things that are higher than inflation. The problem with this is it doesn't take into account a well known issue called "cost disease". Cost disease is the fact that while, on a per unit basis, things that don't involve a lot of human interaction tends to quickly decrease on a per unit basis, things that do involve a lot of human interaction such as healthcare, elderly care, child care tend to level out the gains made via automation because the average per hour rate of all economic activity tends to increase when automation increases.

What that means is that even though computers, clothes, electronics, etc have quickly decreased in relation to inflation, things that necessarily involve a lot of human interaction such as childcare, elderly care, education, etc quickly increase relative to inflation so you get a chart were the primary variable relative to inflation isn't something like free trade but how much interaction is necessary on a per unit basis.

Another non paul d targeted post.

https://www.ft.com/content/c1a92c47-...a-65bb8f4ffacc

Possibly pay walled article.

Ah. Now you mention it, yes, i knew i had seem that chart before, and yeah. It was in that context of championing free trade. That wasnt my point.

Id say some of those last ones you mention (healthcare, childcare, education) are just as vulnerable to technology disruption, we just havent seen it yet to the same degree.

Case in point. I've covered the same content on Coursera i the last two months for $50 that i would have to pay $3000 to $5000 for at a university. Now its not quite apples and apples, and its a course that lends itself to the online format more than most, but i think it is a sign of things to come.

So Mr. Cherrypicker wants to copypasta stuff he knowwwssssss is right.

- link

I can cherrypick as well. And funny thing is that was from 5 years ago and remains true. Not only that the whole premise of this thread was born out of silliness. QE gonna **** us all...... yeaahhhhhh... ~half a decade after the last rounds of it.

.

You're not contributing anything but cherrypicking on a subject you seem to want to yell and shake your fist about instead of you know googling "BLS CPI". Looking at the FAQ. And perhaps educating yourself a little more instead of posting anti-governmental type derp.

Like, you can call me a dick, I'm trying to nudge you into learning instead of drawing your conclusions from a bunch of biased articles.

Tell me about your degree some more. Which top 500 university was it from?

Lol, hypocrite.

Just admit your a partisan hack who has no interest in learning.

I think education is something unique in that the essentials of education, the bare knowledge, is easily available. The question then becomes is education more than the bare information, aka does an MBA entail more than merely the rote facts of business, but how to write an executive summary, how to play labor off of each other, how to pit regulation against itself, the people you meet, the connection with the teachers who teach you, aka more than mere knowledge or is education itself a signaling exercise where what you lean is less relevant than the fact that you're willing to learn the facts of whatever your learning and therefore who that you're willing to do what it takes to apply yourself in your specific realm of study.


I think both are disappointing to those who wish that education become a mass online experience because either education is more there mere facts that require one on one education that will necessarily be difficult to "disrupt" or education is a signaling exercise in which case it'd be best to minimize the spending completely because an education has nothing to do with what you actually learn rather than showing what you're willing to do in pursuit of an education .

.

One is a typo (typing too fast). One is a misspelling. And you're proving yourself to be a big old hypocrite. You refuse to address issues unless it caters to your preconceived notions whilst accusing me of not contributing.

So have you looked at the BLS FAQ instead of leaving it up to mistery? Or are you always intellectually lazy and dishonest?

ps You deserve all the smugness

I think its clearly both.

I.e. education is much more than just the facts you learn AND a big part of the value of institutional education is the signaling.

The first is certainly part of why online education has taken much longer to take off but i dont think its a fundemental barrier to technological disruption.

I.e. a teacher or professor in india or the philippines earns much less than in the US or the UK. In a world of cheap VR and/or full room videoconferencing, that price difference will be difficult to sustain.

Likewise, when you look at how teachers (or childcare professionals etc) spend their time. How much of it is real value add and how much is open to automation?

Finally, the psychology of how we learn, retain information, and develop skills is developing rapidly, this has been very slow to be taken up in education, but does offer paths for more technological disruption.

Re signalling. I think this is why further education seens to be moving faster, and why im doing courseras not a paid masters. Ive no need of more signals, i just need to learn a ton of stuff. (Although arguing with idiots on 2+2 instead of finishing my coursework could be a strong point in favour if a real uni)

I mean, rugby, you said BLS has reasons to fudge like some conspiracy theorist. Back it up.

.

You can keep multiquoting. However, you're not dispelling the derp you laid.

So are you going to actually prove the BLS is in business of fudging or just continue being a petty pissant who cherrypicks articles?

And lets look at wrongness..

1) You didn't know QE isn't a new thing
2) You don't seem to understand what's measured in CPIs. Nor understand why some goods aren't included in it and instead defer to inflationistas.

I think the stuff im interested in cooking, fashion, writing fiction, business I don't think i need a university. Whats more, things like data and ai that are mostly learned in the cloud, it could be possible that someone learns faster and better outside a school than in it. ie what you said about coursera, what if it turns out people who study things intensely on there own learn better than at an average university.
So i think that leaves people who actually need to go to college , doctors and chemist in their own seperate category. I think using the internet plus having a strong apprentice would teach me more about cooking than going to the culinary institute of america, provided that in addition to the internet I had a strong group of chefs to work with. So i see a lot the humanities side turning into a new form of learning that coexists with the rapid dispersal of information that resemble clubs or apprenticeships.
And then you get into sci fi stuff where ai will not only make us smarter and have more access to information but will also alter our brains so that we know how to learn better than people in the past did. I think education is going to some really fascinating places with much promise and peril. just some thoughts.