Re: Food Prices

On Mon, 26 May 2025 13:54:56 -0500, AMuzi <am@yellowjersey.org> wrote:

On 5/26/2025 1:39 PM, Jeff Liebermann wrote:

On Mon, 26 May 2025 13:18:49 -0500, AMuzi <am@yellowjersey.org> wrote:
 

On 5/26/2025 12:34 PM, Jeff Liebermann wrote:

On Mon, 26 May 2025 17:24:06 GMT, cyclintom <cyclintom@yahoo.com>
wrote:
>

On Sun May 25 18:28:31 2025 Shadow  wrote:

On Sun, 25 May 2025 20:07:33 GMT, cyclintom <cyclintom@yahoo.com>
wrote:
>

At the local supermarket, food prices have been dropping like rocks. Take for instance, wine, Apothic red mixes just scant weeks ago were showing $16.99 reduced to $10.99. Now, the same thing is $10.99 reduced to $6.99. Bread is almost back to pre-Biden. I'm telling you, those tariffs are really killing us. Certainly not everything has gone down but I'm assuming that they soon will.

>
So an increase in taxes lowered prices?
Sounds like raising taxes is a good idea, then, and everything
I learned about economy was wrong.
[]'s
>
PS Maybe not for you. You can't drink alcohol. Read the
absolute contraindications of your meds.

>

Where were taxes raised?

>
A tariff is a tax on imported goods.  The importer pays the tax, which
is then passed on to distributors, dealers, and eventually individual
buyers.
>

 

Mr Kunich's chosen plonk (Apothic) is domestic.

 
Thanks.  The importer or distributor probably does not pass on their
increased tariff costs by individual items.  The distributor probably
also sells foreign wines that are subject to tariff taxation.  My
guess(tm) is that the distributor will pass on a single uniform
percentage price increase across their entire wine inventory because
it's easier to administer.  If we see the price of domestic wines
increase along with imported wines, that's a likely cause.
 
 

>
Yes to all that, which again references the difference
between the general inflation rate and specific items, which
naturally and always fluctuate both by product and also
locally. It could well be that not one single individual
item in the entire nation increased by exactly the current
general inflation rate (officially 0.2% in April, but more
likely with a long string of numbers to the right of that 2):
>
https://www.bls.gov/cpi/

Please be careful when you specify a general inflation rate.  There
are many ways to specify the CPI.  See the column on the right:
"United States Inflation Rate"
<https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/inflation-cpi>

2025 CPI in "points"
<https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/consumer-price-index-cpi>
1982-1984 = 100 points.

If we're only discussing the price of wine, the CPI can't be used
because the calculations and forecasts do NOT include alcohol
beverages.  Here's the current Food CPI forecast spreadsheet:
<https://ers.usda.gov/sites/default/files/_laserfiche/DataFiles/50673/CPIForecast.xlsx?v=75961>
which shows the current predicted 2025 CPI at:
   Low   Mid   Upper
   1.6%  2.9%  4.1%
with range of 3:1, the official 2.1% is at best an informed guess.

Trying to use the CPI to predict short term (i.e. monthly) price
changes is at best a crap shoot.
<https://ers.usda.gov/sites/default/files/_laserfiche/DataFiles/50673/CPIHistoricalForecast.xlsx?v=41106>
These numbers are not the actual historical CPI numbers, but rather
the estimated CPI.  Again, note the large range of numbers.  For extra
entertainment, follow the price of eggs over the last few years.  Eggs
in May 2025 was forecast at:
   Low    Mid    Upper
   22.6%  39.2%  59.9%
Heard anyone in the media complain about 39.2% inflation for eggs?




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Jeff Liebermann                 jeffl@cruzio.com
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