View From The Porch: A friendly economic reminder:

Monday, December 31, 2007

A friendly economic reminder:

Stuff's not getting more expensive; money's getting more cheap.

9 comments:

Anonymous said...: Except for the price of certain kinds of food. That's been getting more expensive because of the bullshit ethanol initiative.; 11:31 AM, December 31, 2007
Anonymous said...: Why is it that when my house is worth more than twice as much as I paid for it, the tax assessor is wearing out the truck touring the area, but when the value drops through the bottom he's nowhere to be found?

I don't plan to sell -- I'll die on my patio (that's the plan, anyway), so a lower value on my place should be an advantage of sorts, but it doesn't work out that way.

I could buy milk and (more) beer if the taxes followed a properly assessed value.; 3:29 PM, December 31, 2007
Assrot said...: No shit Sherlock. I just got a notice in the mail today that due to an increase in property tax and home owners insurance my mortgage payment will be going up another $100 a month. They could not wait until after New Years Day to let me know.

Happy New Year Tam. I hope its a good one for you and yours.

:-)

Joe; 4:58 PM, December 31, 2007
Anonymous said...: A fairly good indicator (not perfect, but pretty good) of the value of the dollar is how much gold can be bought with it. The actual cost of physically extracting gold remains about the same in term of human endeavor, plus a finagle factor for energy costs (which are an important factor in any mining industry).

Two years ago the price of a troy ounce of gold (invert it to get the value of a dollar) was right around $400. It's currently at around $830 an ounce.

Despite what our precious dot-gov has to say about "core inflation" or "consumer price index", the value of the dollar today is about half of what it was two years ago.; 5:59 PM, December 31, 2007
staghounds said...: Thank you for the compliment of a link!

Drops through the bottom? Unless you are part of a pretty
narrow group, your house's value has "declined"
little, if at all. Might take you a bit longer to sell it though.

Calling this a bubble or collapse reflects the media's desire to sell advertising. And perhaps its employees' personal connections. You know, the
Pauline Kael syndrome.

I think the 50% decline in two years is a bit high, but I'd say 20% is a conservative estimate. Gold prices were artificially depressed for a few years by several factors. Notably the increased attraction of other things as an investments, and sell offs of large gold stocks by governments.

At the VERY BOTTOM OF THE MARKET, if only those who favour government planning of economies would notice.; 8:55 PM, December 31, 2007
NotClauswitz said...: Ours has gone up, not as magnificently as before but more like incrementally which is more appropriate - my big sister, I dunno what to do with the girl.
Anyhow, piston or regular upper? Beowulf 50 just to mark they years?
I dunno...I wanna do something for my birthday.; 12:10 AM, January 01, 2008
Anonymous said...: Tam, have you bought any factory rifle/pistol ammo recently? It can't all be chalked-up to money devaluation...; 1:48 AM, January 01, 2008
Tam said...: Yes, yes it can.

Rifle and pistol ammunition is made largely of copper, zinc, and lead.

All three of these metals have surged in price 100-300% in the last 2.5 years or so.

Plus, there's a war going on.

You do the math. Be sure to show your work.; 2:38 AM, January 01, 2008
Anonymous said...: Hmmm. I ain't that good at math. "Pass" :)

So you claim that the true value of these commodities has not increased at all, despite increased demand (from China, the war, etc.); only that we have to pay more dollars to obtain them?

I agree that the falling dollar has a lot to do with price increases in general, but as I said, I don't think it can be assigned as the fall guy for ALL of it.

I wouldn't be surprised if it accounted for one-half to two-thirds of the total percentages you quoted, but the rest would still be attributable to other causes, such as increased demand (China buying a lot more metal to feed its growing industrial base) or decreased supplies.

So, is everyone else paying more for this stuff, or are we the only ones (in which case you'd be completely correct)?; 2:23 AM, January 02, 2008