(07-18-2024, 02:24 PM)Jag149 Wrote: OK the inflation topic is a metric and easy to understand why. Follow me and I'll take a shot at this.

The first thin Biden did when taking office is to begin to attack the fossil fuels, at the time we we as a country energy independent. .  I understand the reason why. I am not debating the why. Diesel fuel used by truck and trains averages $2.74 per gallon under Trump.  Under Biden it averaged 3.77 per gallon. It rose from the lower Trump levels and for 9 months was above $5.00, peaking in June of 2022 at $5.74 per gallon. (about the same time inflation did at 9%)  This has an effect on everything the consumer does or buys.  So what effect did that have?

Let's take apples. They move on average 1555 miles to get to the consumer. A truck that averages 8.5 miles per gallon uses 193 gallons. (this is pretty generous as many do not come close to this average)  That is a cost of $517 under Trump and $869 under Biden. (that is using the $3.77 average not the peak of $5.74) This is an increase of 68%.  for a truckload of apples. You can do this for other items, but due to the laws of math the increase will remain about the same.  Biden began loosening (draining the reserve Trump filled) some that has slowly reduced this cost to around $3.77 June 2024.

I have analyzed jobs as well. There are many things there as well.  Like the "revision" to past reports are always down and it is based on a shrinking work week of 34 hours?  Last months job increase was around 100,000, which on the surface seems solid. Unfortunately for taxpayers 70,000 of those were government jobs and part time.

Now any ideas to clarify more, am open to suggestions.

This is a great post, but I would like to add to it to support the example.  In the apples example, only fuel for the delivery was used as a calculation to keep things simple.  When you look a the larger picture, these are other items that went up with inflation that will all effect the apple prices.  

Farm labor costs
Fertilizer
Diesel for the tractors and tree shakers / harvesters
Cardboard flats for packaging and displaying apples
Store labor cost ect.  

I've heard multiple left leaning politicians blame corporate greed for the cost of goods rising.  Biden is chief among them, but honestly he is just reading a prepared script.  I am dumbfounded when they get in front of a camera and try to tell people barely getting by how great the economy is.  Just a few years back we were paying things off early and building our savings, now for the last two years I've stopped paying an extra 800.00 on the mortgage every month and the accounts are barely stable.  

I am still putting a decent amount in my 401 each month as is the wife, but not everyone is as fortunate as we are.  The only reason we are not doing worse is my job comes with about 25 to 30 hours a week overtime.  If that suddenly dries up its going to get very tight.

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