Inflation here? gas/grocery prices just continue to climb (2 Viewers)

[Eeyore]

I hate to keep saying this, but we, as Americans, are generally too stupid, too greedy and too shortsighted to see the forest for the trees.

OMG look at gas prices. Gas is too high...., but finally my oil people are making money. The people don't care about Ida or the fact that a year ago oil cost more to store than produce and so production stopped.

We whine about how much stuff costs, but then fight any attempt to regulate anything.

You want stable oil prices? Regulation does that.

The pandemic was an enormous shock to a fairly efficient system. Instead of going to the mall, we ordered from Amazon or anyone who would deliver to our doors. Hell, my country club has had the best 18 months for dining in 30 years because they deliver now to the area within 3 miles and do more food business than ever and when the whole thing started they thought they'd be crushed. Membership is up 100 members in 18 months all due to the pandemic. FedX, UPS and USPS are busier than ever delivering coffee from places we never heard of 18 months ago, but can click online and get it in 3 days.

It's going to take another year or so to work out the shock assuming we don't collapse the economy because of the very free market inefficiencies inherent in our system that most of the complainers support ignorantly and to the death.

High oil prices keep me working. Our biggest customers use our steel for oil exploration. It doesn't stop my coworkers from complaining though.

 

[EGLSShin]

It's not your imagination - it's real.

So if you didn't get at least a 6.2% pay increase, you took a pay cut basically.

 

[Eeyore]

It's almost as if the laws of supply and demand work on the labor side as well.

A Florida restaurant chain says boosting pay and offering better benefits helped it end its labor shortage

Pollo Tropical is raising prices by between 4% and 6% in December to fund its higher wages, sign-on bonuses, and improved benefits.

www.businessinsider.com

 

[dtc]

So if you didn't get at least a 6.2% pay increase, you took a pay cut basically.

That's pretty misleading.

Many items that contribute to a market basket inflation rate are irrelevant to your typical middle class household.

You don't have to purchase plywood and lumber to run your home. Aluminum and steel building products aren't a big proportion of home budgets, but food costs and transport play a pretty big role these days.

We can expect some of these changes to pass over the next few months as fleeting market adjustments, but some things simply aren't going to change and the $8 per hour employee is now an historical artifact.

 

[bigdaddysaints]

Totally on board with this. I admit to being one who over-bought into the benefits of globalization. Everything has its seedy underbelly, I suppose.

but when you have to pay a worker $12/h instead of $12/day, you can expect a pretty high markup in that product, then y'all will be even madder..

 

[Saint_Ward]

 

[Saint_Ward]

It's almost as if the laws of supply and demand work on the labor side as well.

A Florida restaurant chain says boosting pay and offering better benefits helped it end its labor shortage

Pollo Tropical is raising prices by between 4% and 6% in December to fund its higher wages, sign-on bonuses, and improved benefits.

www.businessinsider.com

I love me some Pollo tropical. Don't get it much lately, but I need to change that. Good chicken.

6% is a pretty small price change.

 

[Zztop]

might be interesting to some

U.S. to release 50 mln barrels of oil from emergency reserve - White House

The United States will release 50 million barrels of crude from the U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve to help cool oil prices,that will start hitting the market in mid- to late-December, the White House said on Tuesday.

www.reuters.com

The United States will release 50 million barrels of crude from the U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve to help cool oil prices,that will start hitting the market in mid- to late-December, the White House said on Tuesday.

The release, will take the form of a loan and a sale,and was being in made concert with other releases from strategic reserves by China, India, South Korea, Japan and Britain, senior Biden administration officials said.

It was the first time the United States has coordinated releases with some of the world's largest oil consumers, the officials said.

 

[WhoDatPhan78]

CL.1 | Crude Oil WTI (NYM $/bbl) Front Month Overview | MarketWatch

CL.1 | A complete Crude Oil WTI (NYM $/bbl) Front Month futures overview by MarketWatch. View the futures and commodity market news, futures pricing and futures trading.

www.marketwatch.com

I would have thought that oil prices and especially futures would be down this AM after that announcement, but they are up and rising...

 

[SaintInBucLand]

CL.1 | Crude Oil WTI (NYM $/bbl) Front Month Overview | MarketWatch

CL.1 | A complete Crude Oil WTI (NYM $/bbl) Front Month futures overview by MarketWatch. View the futures and commodity market news, futures pricing and futures trading.

www.marketwatch.com

I would have thought that oil prices and especially futures would be down this AM after that announcement, but they are up and rising...

That's because tapping the strategic reserves is only a temporary fix and people know prices will continue to rise.

 

[WhoDatPhan78]

That's because tapping the strategic reserves is only a temporary fix and people know prices will continue to rise.

Then it isn't even a temporary fix.

Maybe speculative profit is a problem.

 

[DaveXA]

went to the Dollar store today (don't ask) and now almost everything is 1.25. Dollar Twenty Five store just doesn't have the same ring to it.

They should just go ahead and call it the 2 dollar store.

 

[bclemms]

Something that has been widely ignored on the labor shortage end. Reminds me of my dad screaming about the immigration problem while his entire landscape crew was made up of Hondurans while completely failing to see the irony beating him across the head with a bat.

MSN

Oil may already be in the process of screaming back towards $50 due to a combination of increasing supply, reduced demand in Europe and a coordinated release of oil reserves. The question then becomes, are we starting a battle with OPEC+ who will slow production as their way of pushing back against the stategic oil release causing oil to surge back up? Reserves are just that, the supply is finite. If oil runs down too much then the same people griping about high gas prices will be griping about being unemployed.

The solution to the oil problem is to quit subsidizing oil and do everything in our power to go green for so many reasons.

On the inflation end, yeah we have inflation. We doubled the national debt in a few years with free money. Inflation was going to happen and I've been preaching it in the investment threads for a couple of years. Pretending it isn't being pushed into overdrive by pent up demand is also naive.

It reminds me of the saying, "If money only grew on trees". If it did, money would be worth the same amount as leaves.


In conclusion, both political sides are like cars driving down a one lane highway at full speed in opposite directions. The left want to give money away to everyone pretending the end result isn't less value of that money. The right want to pretend that we can control the price of oil without consequence when it costs us twice as much money to produce as places like Saudi.

Reduce immigration and suddenly low paying jobs aren't so low paying. Reduce immigration and suddenly the low paying jobs can't be filled and the worker shortage leads to higher pay. You would think the left would want to reduce immigration to help raise wages from the bottom up. You would think the right would want to increase immigration to keep wages low so businesses could make more money. The battle lines that are drawn in politics make absolutely no sense.

For anyone paying attention to the price of oil and wants to know how it works, it's really simple. In January of 2020 the US became energy independent. It was the first time in decades the US did not import any oil from Saudi Arabia. Within 3 weeks Saudi and Russia flooded the oil market crashing the price. Saudi and Russia can sell $25 oil and still make money. At $25 the US oil business goes belly up and they have to shut down production. Once the US production is completely disrupted then OPEC+ meets and puts production caps in place driving the oil prices back up. It takes years for the US oil production to get back up to full speed and in that process oil prices go through the roof because US companies understand that if they dump all their investments in at once to get things running that OPEC+ will just crash the market again wiping out all that investment. High oil prices don't impact places like Saudi where gas is never more than pocket change, it only impacts places like the US and Europe.

Want to add extra incentive to OPEC+ to push control over the market? Talk about green energy and green initiatives on a global scale. They know they have a product that has a limited shelf life and they are going to try and maximize the price of every drop and I can't blame them. For the US, it's like Missouri trying to compete with Louisiana in the shrimp industry, it's simply geographical advantages that can't be overcome. The only way to get energy independence is the greatly reduce the need for oil through green energy policies. The same people on the right yelling at the gas prices are the same people fighting the transition to green energy. Meanwhile, the left is pushing reducing the use of fossil fuels before the infrastructure for green energy is in place acting like it isn't going to drive prices up, even if it is all talk.

It's no wonder other countries think we are so dumb and it's no wonder Saudi can pretend to be our ally while inflicting tremendous damage to our contry without any consequence.


So just like Covid, politicize very basic function of markets and expect disasterous results. In the end, free markets will work it out and prices will stabilize but the swings getting there are going to be really volatile. At least until the next crisis unfolds and we start the process over again.

 

[guidomerkinsrules]

I nominate bcclems for Secy of Common Sense

 

[Maxp]

There is one other element to the oil price issue and domestically sourced oil. In 2017 we made it legal to export domestically produced oil. At the time, no one cared because oil was cheap and it "helped" oil companies. Now that the price of oil is high, we are exporting over 1 million barrels of oil a day to Asia(mostly China). Sweet crude that is easier and therefore cheaper to refine.