Are there inflation indicators that aren’t government controlled? Don’t think anything coming out of trump influenced bodies is worth the paper it’s on anymore
There are plenty of indicators, not like its an exact science. Can trust the government one to be always under-reported, the incentive is obvious. I'm a fan of gold prices for longer periods of time.
What you really need to understand about inflation, is that we've had particularly exceptionally low long-term inflation in America for the last 50 years, outside of stagflation in the '70s.
And this is all enabled by globalization and global trade. Globalization fundamentally provides arbitrage for two things. Labor costs, and environmental regulation.
Because there were a lot of poor desperate countries that would build your stuff for near slave labor conditions.
In particular, China of course. But China has now passed through its phase of poor desperation. It is now an urbanized economy. So of a lot of other poor desperate countries aren't quite as poor desperate.
Globalization is fundamentally enabled by the US Navy and US military supremacy guaranteeing shipping trade on the oceans.
This has not been the historical Norm. It's actually historical anomaly caused by the power vacuum of world war II, and secondarily by the fact that the Cold war was between the US and maritime power and Russia, who are effectively landlocked.
Some scholars term China as a continental power, especially cuz of their history of invasion like the Mongols, but unlike Russia, China has a very large coastline with a lot of ports that aren't locked in by Arctic ice.
They are a hybrid Continental and a maritime power, and based on their shipbuilding, their ambitions are to become a maritime power.
This combined with American lack of enthusiasm for maintaining this global order, likely means that globalization will come to an end.
And that means onshoring production back from China.
We'll see if this actually happens, but that is the trend long-term.
And that involves a huge amount of switching costs, which essentially is going to be inflation.
I'm certainly not going to sit here and say that Trump's economic policies are correct. Of course, the proper way to handle a transition of reonshoring our production from our previous 50 years of globalization would be gradual and controlled.
Not a bunch of stupid chaotic tariff policies.
But essentially what Trump is doing is in line with everything I've described.
> What you really need to understand about inflation, is that we've had particularly exceptionally low long-term inflation in America for the last 50 years, outside of stagflation in the '70s.
What you really need to understand is that we can, and we must absolutely, generally and non-exceptionally have low inflation at all times. There's absolutely no sane reason to have high inflation in a low-corruption financial system - none!
> Globalization... US Navy... US military... China hybrid... American lack of enthusiasm for guaranteeing shipping trade on the oceans.
A bunch of red herrings meaning nothing... It's not lack of enthusiasm, it's the overabundance of enthusiasm for tariffs and sanctions backed by the same US Navy & US Military to maintain a restricted trade regime which, not-accidentally, results in the US public being trapped in a monopolized and inflationary market.
> And that involves a huge amount of switching costs, which essentially is going to be inflation.
You mean, the population will bear the costs via the inflation tax, while the rich will be getting richer, because... historical norms should not be broken, especially this one?
Historically, messed up trade led to global wars, actually, it's either global trade or global wars, there's no middle ground. You failed to mention that important historical norm which is also one of the ways to make the rich richer.
The historical norms are something we should absolutely steer clear of, not use them as excuses for more nonsense in the future!
> But essentially what Trump is doing is in line with everything I've described.
No. Trump's tariffs are too unfocused to accomplish any goal besides increasing American inflation from what I've read.
Trump's tariffs on raw materials, metals, etc make no sense whatsoever.
Motivating the creation of new mines or refining facilities should have been done through subsidies, possibly combined with promise of future tariffs.
And, obviously, Trump's tariffs on raw materials raise the cost of construction & composite products, which will likely push manufacturing out of the U.S.
>Globalization is fundamentally enabled by the US Navy and US military supremacy guaranteeing shipping trade on the oceans.
>This has not been the historical Norm. It's actually historical anomaly caused by the power vacuum of world war II, and secondarily by the fact that the Cold war was between the US and maritime power and Russia, who are effectively landlocked.
>This combined with American lack of enthusiasm for maintaining this global order, likely means that globalization will come to an end.
Oh here friend, I think you forget to add a citation to all that, here's your citation so people know where the idea come from (not you):
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Zeihan
I don't trust any government numbers regardless of who the president is. There will always be pressure to fudge the numbers to make who ever is running things look good.
There use to be a billion prices project out of MIT that got shutdown years ago because it show higher inflation than what the rulers at the Fed wanted to show. I believe its funding was pulled or something like that.
Do you have any evidence it was shut down by the Fed? I looked briefly at the BPP numbers and they aren't that far off the CPI. There were even a few times it was lower than the CPI. There was a 2 year period that BPP was noticeably higher but it eventually converged.
What’s crazy is that of all the fudgeable numbers in economics, consumer inflation is the one they should try to be the most honest about. It’s something that consumers can more or less directly observe, so having an official number that’s much below people’s “wallet meter” is doing nothing but erode trust in government. In fact, given that a steady inflation rate actually leads to bigger and bigger price increases, most people are going to feel worse about it at a visceral level. If the government wanted to build credibility with the public, they’d come up with a metric that better aligns with people’s actual economic situations. But then that might lead to people demanding higher wages, so I guess it’s a nonstarter in America.
The problem with gold is that it's price fluctuates just like any other commodity. The practical uses of gold accounts for only ~8% of gold mined, while half is for vanity (jewelry, a luxury product) and the rest for speculation and reserves. Similar to fiat, most of the value in gold is in people believing it has value.
The price of gold is not immediately responsive to goods inflation, it can be lagging or leading and the correlation can also fluctuate. Long term it's been good at tracking money supply but short term it doesn't necessarily give you a timely signal.
> Responding to prior criticisms made by economist James Hamilton, John Williams explained in a private phone call that Shadowstats does not actually recalculate BLS data, rather, the Shadowstats CPI merely adds a constant to the officially reported numbers.[28]
I briefly scanned the BPP data and it was pretty close to the official CPI. The BPP is usually a bit higher, and for a short time noticeably higher, but they generally converge.
If you actually stop and think about it for a couple seconds, you should realize immediately that a “secret” inflation rate of 10% is impossible. You can lie about that for a month or two, but 10% annual inflation means prices double every 7 years, which is obviously not what we observe.
The problem the admin has is that economists at the BLS by and large aren't scared of getting fired. That work experience is gold in the private sector - most of them can easily get a job in finance and 3x-4x their comp.
With a d———- there is no nuance. You don’t get credit for fudging them and making them less bad, you save your job by releasing a positive number, the more positive the better. Truth be damned
If you implement a tiered tax credit on gross regenue earned for wages paid, that decreases exponentially from the lowest-paid worker percentile to the highest, then producers could offset the tax on imported materials by paying an increased share of the revenue to their lowest-paid workers rather than raising prices. The government wins because household buying power and taxes paid increase, the household wins because buying power increases are decoupled from price increases, and shareholders win because wage increases shift the domestic demand outward (rightward), compensating for downward shift along the demand curve from price increases.
Setting the refund rate to (the target inflation rate minus the current inflation rate) times a constant defined by the Fed alongside the reserve rate also provides the Fed a long-term lever of financial incentive: for firms to increase wages paid rather than profits paid, when the Fed raises the constant to combat price inflation, and to increase profits paid rather than wages paid when the Fed lowers the constant to combat price stagnation. It also offers a control against layoffs for profit by specifying such that reduction in workforce in each percentile reduces the target inflation rate in the above equation; a layoff of the entire lowest-paid percentile to avoid lowering prices would result in a significant tax penalty charged at the next higher percentile’s rates, unless prices were so stagnant (or decreasing!) that the Fed’s target had been adjusted to allow it.
That this isn’t coded into today’s U.S. monetary policy is certainly true; but it merely requires an act of Congress to resolve. It’s important not to take for granted that what we’re used to is therefore what must be.
Another thing to watch for is the BLS import prices which show prices excluding tariffs. If these remain flat for July as they did for June, it would be another data point suggesting tariffs induced inflation.
The surge in services costs seems to be a bit of a surprise (?):
> Services inflation provided much of the push higher, moving 1.1% higher in July for the largest gain also since March 2022. Trade services margins rose 2%, coming amid ongoing developments in President Donald Trump’s tariff implementations.
> In addition, 30% of the increase in services came from a 3.8% increase in machinery and equipment wholesaling. Also, portfolio management fees surged 5.8% and airline passenger services prices rose 1%.
> The government on Tuesday reported a mild increase in consumer prices in July, though rising costs for services like dental care and airline tickets caused a measure of underlying inflation to post its largest gain in six months.
> While financial markets have priced in an interest rate cut from the Federal Reserve next month, rising services inflation and the expectation tariffs could still significantly boost goods prices left some economists doubtful of a resumption in policy easing in the absence of labor market deterioration.
When it comes to (Fed) policy, the other thing they look at besides inflation/PCE is employment, which appears to be softening (see recent revisions which caused recent Trump-BLS turmoil).
Readit News
There have been research programs that collected the data themselves:
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MIT_Billion_Prices_project
And this is all enabled by globalization and global trade. Globalization fundamentally provides arbitrage for two things. Labor costs, and environmental regulation.
Because there were a lot of poor desperate countries that would build your stuff for near slave labor conditions.
In particular, China of course. But China has now passed through its phase of poor desperation. It is now an urbanized economy. So of a lot of other poor desperate countries aren't quite as poor desperate.
Globalization is fundamentally enabled by the US Navy and US military supremacy guaranteeing shipping trade on the oceans.
This has not been the historical Norm. It's actually historical anomaly caused by the power vacuum of world war II, and secondarily by the fact that the Cold war was between the US and maritime power and Russia, who are effectively landlocked.
Some scholars term China as a continental power, especially cuz of their history of invasion like the Mongols, but unlike Russia, China has a very large coastline with a lot of ports that aren't locked in by Arctic ice.
They are a hybrid Continental and a maritime power, and based on their shipbuilding, their ambitions are to become a maritime power.
This combined with American lack of enthusiasm for maintaining this global order, likely means that globalization will come to an end.
And that means onshoring production back from China.
We'll see if this actually happens, but that is the trend long-term.
And that involves a huge amount of switching costs, which essentially is going to be inflation.
I'm certainly not going to sit here and say that Trump's economic policies are correct. Of course, the proper way to handle a transition of reonshoring our production from our previous 50 years of globalization would be gradual and controlled.
Not a bunch of stupid chaotic tariff policies.
But essentially what Trump is doing is in line with everything I've described.
What you really need to understand is that we can, and we must absolutely, generally and non-exceptionally have low inflation at all times. There's absolutely no sane reason to have high inflation in a low-corruption financial system - none!
> Globalization... US Navy... US military... China hybrid... American lack of enthusiasm for guaranteeing shipping trade on the oceans.
A bunch of red herrings meaning nothing... It's not lack of enthusiasm, it's the overabundance of enthusiasm for tariffs and sanctions backed by the same US Navy & US Military to maintain a restricted trade regime which, not-accidentally, results in the US public being trapped in a monopolized and inflationary market.
> And that involves a huge amount of switching costs, which essentially is going to be inflation.
You mean, the population will bear the costs via the inflation tax, while the rich will be getting richer, because... historical norms should not be broken, especially this one?
Historically, messed up trade led to global wars, actually, it's either global trade or global wars, there's no middle ground. You failed to mention that important historical norm which is also one of the ways to make the rich richer.
The historical norms are something we should absolutely steer clear of, not use them as excuses for more nonsense in the future!
No. Trump's tariffs are too unfocused to accomplish any goal besides increasing American inflation from what I've read.
Trump's tariffs on raw materials, metals, etc make no sense whatsoever.
Motivating the creation of new mines or refining facilities should have been done through subsidies, possibly combined with promise of future tariffs.
And, obviously, Trump's tariffs on raw materials raise the cost of construction & composite products, which will likely push manufacturing out of the U.S.
>This has not been the historical Norm. It's actually historical anomaly caused by the power vacuum of world war II, and secondarily by the fact that the Cold war was between the US and maritime power and Russia, who are effectively landlocked.
>This combined with American lack of enthusiasm for maintaining this global order, likely means that globalization will come to an end.
Oh here friend, I think you forget to add a citation to all that, here's your citation so people know where the idea come from (not you): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Zeihan
There use to be a billion prices project out of MIT that got shutdown years ago because it show higher inflation than what the rulers at the Fed wanted to show. I believe its funding was pulled or something like that.
https://thebillionpricesproject.com/datasets/
Dead Comment
The purchasing power of Gold has been remarkably consistent over the long term.
That is, if you convert the gold to dollars, how many eggs could you buy?
To learn more, read up on the work of Keith Weiner of Monetary Metals, or listen to the early episodes of his podcast “The Gold Exchange”.
It’s easy to make data to fit your narrative when you ignore everything that conflicts with it..
https://www.perplexity.ai/search/what-is-the-us-inflation-ra...
Just no:
> Responding to prior criticisms made by economist James Hamilton, John Williams explained in a private phone call that Shadowstats does not actually recalculate BLS data, rather, the Shadowstats CPI merely adds a constant to the officially reported numbers.[28]
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shadowstats.com#Negative
* https://old.reddit.com/r/badeconomics/comments/3zik5t/shadow...* https://www.fullstackeconomics.com/p/no-the-real-inflation-r...
> Truflation
* https://old.reddit.com/r/AskEconomics/comments/1beg6db/how_r...
> Billion Prices
They actually published code so other folks could recreate:
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MIT_Billion_Prices_project
https://thebillionpricesproject.com/datasets/
https://truflation.com/marketplace/us-inflation-rate
https://archive.is/xzohV
If you implement a tiered tax credit on gross regenue earned for wages paid, that decreases exponentially from the lowest-paid worker percentile to the highest, then producers could offset the tax on imported materials by paying an increased share of the revenue to their lowest-paid workers rather than raising prices. The government wins because household buying power and taxes paid increase, the household wins because buying power increases are decoupled from price increases, and shareholders win because wage increases shift the domestic demand outward (rightward), compensating for downward shift along the demand curve from price increases.
Setting the refund rate to (the target inflation rate minus the current inflation rate) times a constant defined by the Fed alongside the reserve rate also provides the Fed a long-term lever of financial incentive: for firms to increase wages paid rather than profits paid, when the Fed raises the constant to combat price inflation, and to increase profits paid rather than wages paid when the Fed lowers the constant to combat price stagnation. It also offers a control against layoffs for profit by specifying such that reduction in workforce in each percentile reduces the target inflation rate in the above equation; a layoff of the entire lowest-paid percentile to avoid lowering prices would result in a significant tax penalty charged at the next higher percentile’s rates, unless prices were so stagnant (or decreasing!) that the Fed’s target had been adjusted to allow it.
That this isn’t coded into today’s U.S. monetary policy is certainly true; but it merely requires an act of Congress to resolve. It’s important not to take for granted that what we’re used to is therefore what must be.
Another thing to watch for is the BLS import prices which show prices excluding tariffs. If these remain flat for July as they did for June, it would be another data point suggesting tariffs induced inflation.
> Services inflation provided much of the push higher, moving 1.1% higher in July for the largest gain also since March 2022. Trade services margins rose 2%, coming amid ongoing developments in President Donald Trump’s tariff implementations.
> In addition, 30% of the increase in services came from a 3.8% increase in machinery and equipment wholesaling. Also, portfolio management fees surged 5.8% and airline passenger services prices rose 1%.
* https://www.cnbc.com/2025/08/14/ppi-inflation-report-july-20...
> The government on Tuesday reported a mild increase in consumer prices in July, though rising costs for services like dental care and airline tickets caused a measure of underlying inflation to post its largest gain in six months.
> While financial markets have priced in an interest rate cut from the Federal Reserve next month, rising services inflation and the expectation tariffs could still significantly boost goods prices left some economists doubtful of a resumption in policy easing in the absence of labor market deterioration.
* https://www.reuters.com/world/us/us-producer-prices-accelera...
When it comes to (Fed) policy, the other thing they look at besides inflation/PCE is employment, which appears to be softening (see recent revisions which caused recent Trump-BLS turmoil).
The US risk for stagflation seems to be growing:
* https://www.investopedia.com/terms/s/stagflation.asp
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stagflation
* https://paulkrugman.substack.com/p/its-beginning-to-smell-a-... (check out the music video link at the end)