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Inflation Watch: It Has Never Been More Expensive To Live The 1% Life
While inflation (explicit in price rises or implicit in USD debauchery) over the past 30 years has eaten away at the average American's standard of living, it is the cost of living the 1%-life that has truly soared. As Forbes' "Cost of Living Extremely Well" index (CLEWI) shows, since 1982, the 1% have seen prices for their goods rise at double the pace of the average joe. However, do not feel too sorry for them, as their net worth, courtesy of various Fed interventions has outpaced the cost of living extremely well by over 4 times.
U.S. inflation might be near-nonexistent overall but not if you’re doing your purchasing at the top. FORBES’ exclusive Cost of Living Extremely Well Index (CLEWI) has outpaced inflation by an average of 2.5 percentage points a year since 1982.
The index measures the prices of 40 superluxe consumer goods across a variety of categories. On average, the items we eyed got pricier by 4.1% (red line), while the Consumer Price Index (blue line) nudged up just 1.7%. But that gap isn’t likely bothering The Forbes 400; their aggregate net worth (gold line) was up 13.3% over last year, more than three times as much as our index.
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So - inflation is evident in stocks (owned by the 1%), real estate (owned by the 1%), and superluxury goods (owned by the 1%)...
What The Fed needs is some good old-fashioned currency panic like in Russia to spark the kinds of 'good' 'broad' inflation that the Keynesian debacle needs to support its incessant debt needs.
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It has never been a worse time to be "middle class". Prices for necessities are up and incomes are stagnant, at best.
Not one tear will be shed for the cost of being a 1%er. They have never had it so good. They best enjoy it while it lasts because a reckoning is coming.
It costs $3-4 a liter for milk worth putting in your mouth. Gallon is $8-10. A decent loaf of bread costs five bucks. Ice cream without strange ingredients, $8.
Anything without strange ingredients is 1-4x more of 'normal' plastic food price. Plastic 'food' is still cheap. Real food is getting rather expensive for commoners.
Oh come on! Platypus Rex says it's the best of times we've ever had.
No more picking on the downtrodden.
"The meat hose is clogged."
- Taco Bell employee
Interesting. This asset manager's Basic Needs Index shows that basic essentials have been increasing at at least twice the rate of the CPI. From their website:
Guild Investment Management has long believed that the existing indices used to measure cost of living changes in the United States are inadequate and misleading.
For instance, the widely quoted inflation index — the Consumer Price Index (CPI) — is currently based on data collected from spending surveys given by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics from approximately 14,000 urban families. In addition to basic needs, the CPI includes other expenditures, such as insurance and taxes. However, it also includes discretionary spending items such as personal care services and entertainment purchases such as the latest flat screen televisions and consumer electronics.
Another point about the CPI is that the Bureau of Labor Statistics periodically alters its content, making adjustments to the weighting of the components, and smoothing seasonal patterns. Such tinkering with data, as we have mentioned over the years, usually results in an understatement of the inflation rate and creates an unreliable, misleading cost of living index.
We believe a simpler index is necessary for tracking the price changes of basic needs. No such index exists. So, we are creating one: the Guild Basic Needs IndexTM. It will not reflect spending patterns of one segment of the population. Rather, it will measure the changing prices of essential living expenditures.
Design of the Guild Basic Needs IndexTM
The Guild Basic Needs IndexTM concentrates on four categories of primary and essential living needs. Each category is assigned a specific percentage of the overall index:
1. Food 30%
2. Clothing 10%
3. Shelter 30%
4. Energy 30%
Food, clothing, and shelter are self-explanatory and energy is needed for basic heating, electricity, cooking, and transportation.
The categories and their values within the Guild Basic Needs IndexTM are fixed. There is no seasonal adjusting, smoothing, or replacing of components. Due to the established and essential nature of the four Guild Basic Needs IndexTM categories, they are consistent and not subject to passing fancy.
http://www.gbni.info/images/430_July_2014_GBNI_Graph.jpg
http://www.gbni.info/images/430_July_2014_GBNI_Chart.jpg
Ponder this. All of the production of the luxury goods is performed by middle class individuals. They can't afford their own products. Why? Taxes, regulation, fines, forfeitures, foreign wars, privileged groups, and government protected monopolies.
Organic non-homo milk is so worth it.
There's definitely a gay joke in there.
Yeah, but, don't let Obama know.
He'll go all Joan Rivers on ya!
Brother Alaric, the unwind is just beginning. Comeuppance is a real bitch, at the end of the cycle.
I couldn't be happier!
This iteration could well end all life on earth, and damn few see it has already started.
Still, I sleep well, by not supporting the status quo.
Take the GOLD line and RED line and tax the difference.
it's probably good for a $1 - $1.5T payoff of the debt
Imagine what the "security" costs will be in a few years.
In places like Boca Raton, already the .0001 percent have hunkered down in their armed security gated community McMansions with gestapo rules and asshole neighbors.
So it's either going to be sleeping in the bathtub or living in a gated compound next door to an asshole. Go USA.
You don't have to be a member of the Uber Rich to live next to an asshole.
Every lived in an apartment complex in Jersey?
The definition of asshole takes on a whole new meaning.
Nobody really needs a gold-plated toilet.
wait till obamacare take full effect
Opulence. I had it.
No Shit, have you guys checked the price of a jar of Grey Poupon lately? Outrageous. Smaller jar too.
Five finger discount should eliminate that little problem.
Its easy to see how the people causing the inflation are out-pacing it since they get to spend the new $$$ first before it devalues.
"However, do not feel too sorry for them, as their net worth, courtesy of various Fed interventions has outpaced the cost of living extremely well by over 4 times."
"... if more money were going to the market, then they would lose much of their value and we would lose profits because we are the ones who print money! That's why we invented inflation, to keep governments in fear and directing money back to us through the so-called Quantitative Easing Policies. [...] When money start to spread in the society 'above acceptable limits', we create financial crises to take them back. We dictate governments to take measures and apply austerity policies directing money back to us. We keep money valuable to everyone and secure our profits."
I just ordered a burger platter from a place.. The price has increased $2.00 since 8/1/2014.
I have stumbled upon/into the 1% life from time to time. I am a good mimic and know how to appear 1%-ish when useful.
Let me tell you, the high is like the finest cocaine. Five-star service everywhere you go. Young women come shining their sex energy at you, no matter what you look like. Love love love. If you have ever had a taste you will never forget and you will always want to get back to it.
Ok.....once you come down off the cocaine those crack whores just won't look the same.
Such base pleasures, like the want of attention and 'love' (HAH!) as a banal submission to the possession of fake (not-righteous, though perhaps real) power and wealth - it does not compare to the glory of mastering one's own thoughts and body, and doing more with less. Taking pride not in the ability to waste abundance but in the ability to put all parts of a whole to use.
They'll never understand.
Yeah cuz nothing attracts chicks at a nightclub than the whole "do more with less" vibe.
They play horrible music at nightclubs. Some bars offer good tunes. Plus, your dick isn't the only thing you are gifted with. You have hands, feet, brain, heart, and facial accoutrements that have their own agendas.
Not to mention the vast majority of the dancers are all lesbians.
That would explain a lot.
Threesomes with coked up models gives only fleeting pleasure.
True satifaction comes with growing your own cabbage.
What kinda cabbage we talkin bout Duke.
Does money grow on trees or are the Sinsemilia plants gettin to ya.
If yer talkin cabbage as in cole slaw den ise is truely disappointed.
Mr Evil
Does money grow on trees? the only inner peace i've found is the sad realisation that there is no easy money or hot babes coming my way.
the lovely russian honeys offered on the ads to the side here would see me as a business transaction.
Money is a good slave and a bad master but hiding on a farm won't change the world, i've only ever made decent money by hard work and grafting long hours
i've never made it by gambling, stocks or even gold - which has probably preserved my wealth as promised.
why should it be otherwise eh?
The home grown leaf is now in the past . I got too fat. :)
A long night in the champagne room with a few visits to the ATM at the local gentlemen's club? Or we talkin a little classier?
inflation? the masses are broke.
deflation perhaps
I think it interesting, in the graph, to see the trickle down that does not trickle down as the name suggest... firmly originated in the Reagan/Thatcher era...lest we forget.
wwxx
The article is bullshit (as are the statistics). The top 400 are not the 1% but the .00001%. The typical 1% person makes $250,000-$500,000/year and their wealth and income isn't up fourfold. The bulk of the rise in wealth is in the .01% (they make 35 million/year or more) to the .000001%.
Pure envy and divide/conquer to blame the upper middle class for your troubles.
Absolutely correct. My oil and natural gas income is down almost 50% to the low six figures per month because of the drop in energy prices. And I'm not able to raise the rent enough on my hundreds of rentals to make up for the loss. And the gas price drop is a double whammy because now the roads are clogged with vehicles as everybody can afford to drive. So my chauffeur can no longer get the job done on 29 hours per week, but if we increase his hours we are forced to buy him health insurance. And to top it off now he's whining that he can't make ends meet on minimum wage, despite the drop in energy prices.
So if any of you are looking for a part-time job, fire me an email. Fringe benefits include one paid day off (5.8 hours) after 3 years of continuous service. Send resume, credit report, and health history to livingthegoodlife@mailinator.com.
Without a TRICKLE DOWN Morality/Justice, you could never have a successful 'trickle-down economy'. The 1% are actually the Dregs of Humanity. Nothing more...
Meanwhile, David Tepper must be wanting to dump his portfolio...
Appaloosa's Tepper sees 8-10% upside in 2015The nicest (publicly listed) suite at one of the resort hotels by me was $50 per night in the 1960s they are now $40,000 per night. That means the median person in the 60s, assuming a 270 day work year with the median salary of 7000 per year had to work two days to afford the best room available whereas today it would be ~208 days worked with the median salary of 52,000 to pay for one nights stay (tax and resort fees extra) so all told an entire yearly salary vs two days.
Granted the rooms are now much nicer with things such as remote controlled toilets and multiple flat screen TVs, the area is also more developed now with more attractions but still the increase is rather shocking.
The proportional rate for a 1960s mega-expensive hotel room would be $5384.62/night. Now, I wasn't around in the 60s, but I'd wager that even "1%ers" could not afford to pay five grand a night for a hotel room.
Thats such BS - "the 1%".
Try buying 65% cotton oxford shirt at macys.
$35 for cheap light polyester gloves at modells. I hope you guys realize that body armor shirts at $40 are crap.
They are teaching us to take whatever crap they dish-out.
Enjoying you molded plastic addidas.
You have to hold your nose when shopping to avoid the stench.
i tried guessing, and my guess is, 90%-100% of the forbes 400 group, their housing, transportation, vacations, health-care ins., clothing, retirement, are job perks.
for everything else, (ie. booze, blow, and prostitutes, etc.), they have business credit-cards, and these expenses will be tax-deductible business expenses, and have accountants, not checkbooks, or cash.
so no, i don't feel sorry for them, because it cost me more in taxes everyday they wake-up.
I think that has something to do with the massive banker bailout enacted this month, a massive tax increase directly to the banks to spend on wars, welfare -- whatever they like -- instead of printing, staving off hyperinflation so the charade can continue.
Interesting how "living extremely well" is equated with "buying the most expensive stuff". Our society in a nutshell.