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Well wait, the data is a bit mixed.
Overall inflation, housing and food costs (assume that is food at and away from home) were below wage growth.
Of course, medical care is way above...but for the majority, that should be baked in to their wages (it's not).
Childcare (something that used to be handled by family) and college (not everyone should attend) are of course issues.
College seems self inflicted, race to the top with more expensive buildings and departments, but what are the returns from those investments (not sure if the net is positive or negative)?
That explains a lot about the state of society. Everything of real value (health and education, food and housing) is getting priced off the budget and we make up for it with cheap entertainment and throw-away clothing.
Well wait, the data is a bit mixed.
Overall inflation, housing and food costs (assume that is food at and away from home) were below wage growth.
Of course, medical care is way above...but for the majority, that should be baked in to their wages (it's not).
Childcare (something that used to be handled by family) and college (not everyone should attend) are of course issues.
College seems self inflicted, race to the top with more expensive buildings and departments, but what are the returns from those investments (not sure if the net is positive or negative)?
nah, all good.
this is a highly aggregated set of data and I simply inferred from it a trend that tallies with other trends in society that are kind of hard to overlook.
No aspersions cast on the source of the data or his integrity.
And I'm also acutely aware that correlation is not causation so I could be way off the mark, but making observations is why people put data into a chart in the first place, so that is all I did.
Note that the average hourly wage is in there too, so the price of things would be better correlated to that.
i'm familiar with perry's work for decades
he's controversial in the fact that he calls out bad policy regardless of political belief systems
also, he has a long standing argument for smarter regulations (especially that favor production/human flourishing)
check his twitter thread or delve into some of his data driven positions
Because he looked a data and made a personal assessment?
If the underlying data is wrong, that's a reasonable objection, but the statement by NoEnz....
That explains a lot about the state of society. Everything of real value (health and education, food and housing) is getting priced off the budget and we make up for it with cheap entertainment and throw-away clothing.
is an observation of the data, not the analyst. Sure, Perry can cherry-pick the elements to include that reinforce his positions, but that doesn't make it bad data.
Not sure why you seem to suggest an agnostic calling out bad policy and intelligent regulations offends you. Could be I'm completely off base with your position here... by the why? followed by the reference to Perry feels negative.
That explains a lot about the state of society. Everything of real value (health and education, food and housing) is getting priced off the budget and we make up for it with cheap entertainment and throw-away clothing.
why?
i'm familiar with perry's work for decades
he's controversial in the fact that he calls out bad policy regardless of political belief systems
also, he has a long standing argument for smarter regulations (especially that favor production/human flourishing)
check his twitter thread or delve into some of his data driven positions
That explains a lot about the state of society. Everything of real value (health and education, food and housing) is getting priced off the budget and we make up for it with cheap entertainment and throw-away clothing.
Bonds are no longer a "safe haven" reflecting how the US is less of a safe haven for investors:
Broadly: the stock/bond relationship has been much more positive in the last year than it was ~20 years ago, when it was typically negative (diversifying).
Over the last year (roughly late-2024 â 2025)
The stockâbond correlation swung higher and turned positive at times, meaning stocks and bonds frequently moved in the same direction.
Example datapoint: T. Rowe Price shows a 13-week rolling correlation between the S&P 500 and the 10-year Treasury moving from -0.72 (Nov 22, 2024) to +0.39 (Jan 21, 2025).
Interpretation: diversification was less reliable, especially during inflation/rates volatility.
20 years ago (early/mid-2000s)
The stockâbond correlation was more consistently negative (stocks down â bonds up), which is the classic â60/40 worksâ regime.
Research summaries from Amundi and AQR note that for much of the first two decades of the 2000s, stockâbond correlation was consistently negative, helping bonds hedge equity drawdowns.
Interpretation: bonds were generally a stronger diversifier vs equities than they have been recently.
The AI mania could wane and drag down the economies of the two superpowers, but the rest of the world is well positioned to pick up the slack
Last year began with a near universal consensus that the only nation worth investing in was the US. It ended with rival markets outrunning the US by wide margins, generating returns twice as high and making America look much less exceptional.The US did not collapse, of course, because its economy and markets were held up by money rushing into artificial intelligence. The question now is how and when does AI mania end, and what will that mean for the world? Here are my top 10 trends for 2026:
Or our refineries are specially built to process it and we don't actually process light sweet as efficiently as other countries do?
Long before the U.S. shale boom, when global production of light sweet crude oil was declining, we made significant investments in our refineries to process heavier, high-sulfur crude oils that were more widely available in the global market. These investments were made to ensure U.S. refineries would have access to the feedstocks needed to produce gasoline, diesel and jet fuel. Heavier crude is now an essential feedstock for many U.S. refineries. Substituting it for U.S. light sweet crude oil would make these facilities less efficient and competitive, leading to a decline in fuel production and higher costs for consumers.
Heavy sour crude is more expensive to refine. The article doesn't go into it at all except to mention that the stuff is so thick they need tankers of naphtha to thin it out enough to make it transportable. And once it's refined, they'll have a lot of asphalts and sulfur and other byproducts.
maybe the reason the article is saying American refineries are chronically short of heavy sour is because we use more asphalts than other countries? Or our refineries are specially built to process it and we don't actually process light sweet as efficiently as other countries do?
It's enough to know that this is about the oil. They don't need to make it seem like Venezuela's oil is some magically superior product.
This is somewhere between fantasy and delusion....
The price of everything is going up. Energy prices were a huge issue in the NJ election...and not because they're going down.
Prices were going down under Biden...and then Trump deployed the tariffs.
Trump is a babbling fool when talking about economic policy, and nobody in his party dares to engage. They are going to get hammered next November... because 2026 is going to be painful.
Looking deeper...this mostly reflects AMZN's 3rd party sellers - small retailers who sell on Amzn. Obviously they are the most to be impacted by tariffs, rising costs. Interesting though most of the AMZN increase was before the tariffs went into place. Regardless, the days of Amzn being a price leader are long gone...they are all about convenience.
