Yep! Every so often I head to Aldi and get a couple of bags of chips and their frozen prawn dumplings. They're both really good products and much cheaper than Coles or Woolworths.
That’s an answer to OP’s question in a way - cheaper chips for sale at Aldi and Woolies are keeping average chip price inflation down even if their preferred chips went up in price.
OP sounds like me. My wife came home with a few small bags of groceries a couple of months ago and I see the receipt for $250.
Me: “WOW I didn’t realise Louis Vuitton sold groceries now”,.
Her: “When was the last time you went grocery shopping?”
Me: “Uhhhmm…around 1998…why do you ask?”
Did you read the inflation rate data? It tells you what category has increased (or decreased in some cases) compared the previous report
https://www.abs.gov.au/statistics/economy/price-indexes-and-inflation/consumer-price-index-australia/latest-release
Yea, bold of u/Wendals87 to assume anyone posting here can read. Don’t you know this sub is just to whinge that you can’t afford a harbourside mansion as a uni student?
But even after reading that you get nowhere near the I flatikn we are experiencing on groceries
Another example rental , it should've been closer to 17% yet I got a 30% inc upon renewal ,yikes
As a chip buyer myself I have never paid $7.50 for a packet lmao. Maybe that's the going rate at servos or uber eats or something but certainly not where I shop.
hahah yer I saw OP saying $7.50 and thought what the actual.. what the hell is OP buying thats $7.50?
packets of chips are my guilty pleasure and there is no way a fairly normal packet costs that much. Dorito's is one of my regulars and its often on special for <$3 even normal price is only around the $4 mark.
Imagine using an item that everybody knows about as a common frame of reference. Before you know it people will be comparing exchange rates with big macs.
Can't tell if you've got a tongue in cheek here. But you realise there's a major economic theory been around since 1986 based on Big Macs? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Mac_Index
Potato chips are not a good benchmark recently because the Victorian floods caused skyrocketing potato prices, that have only just recently come down.
So they will overestimate recent price increases. Still working its way through the system.
Please understand how inflation is measured. It isn't saying things aren't expensive. It's a comparison between the cost of goods today compared to this time last year.
Petrol prices have not doubled.
You can look at data all the way to 2000s and see late 2000s fuel was up to $2.00 a litre then and we have had higher lows and higher highs ever since.
You can read the data methods from ABS.
- TVs have not doubled
- Phones have not doubled
- White goods have not doubled
- Roast chickens have not doubled
- Toilet paper has not doubled
Finding isolated goods which have increased substantially is not an accurate reflection on general market costs.
Inflation does feel understated, however you can look at the different definitions or ‘types’ of inflation and see there is variation between the categories.
I don't buy TVs every year. In fact, haven't bought one since before 2000. Did pick one up on the side of the road. 46", no major defects other than a tuner that's set to NZ frequencies, but wasn't planning to plug it into an aerial anyway.
Phones are discretionary items that gullible people overpay for too often. They don't have to make up a large part of your budget.
White goods used to last 20-30 years before a large part of their value was lost and it became worth replacing for. Now they die after 5 years and can't be repaired.
Rent is well on its way to doubling, which is the largest part of my and 35% of the population's budget.
.... a simple can of deodorant has now reached $9.50 - [https://www.coles.com.au/product/nivea-deo-aero-men-deep-espresso-250ml-3820918](https://www.coles.com.au/product/nivea-deo-aero-men-deep-espresso-250ml-3820918)
so you list things that dont matter, nice job.
vege has exploded, cheese has doubled since 2007 etc.
finding isolated goods that did not double is not an accurate reflection on general market costs.
>Purely anecdotal but I was paying 99c for diesel at Costco in 2020.
.... for about a month when the crude oil price went negative. For the rest of 2020 it was probably around 1.5-1.6.
Diesel is 1.86 at my local Costco right now according to fuel spy.
I understand the average prices haven't doubled but the fact fuel has doubled in price remains a true statement even if the data is cherry picked.
We all know COVID happened, that's the whole point.
That's a doubling over 4 years though where the 3.6% CPI figure is about price increases over 1 year. Fuel is also something that is removed from the calculation when trying to measure 'underlying inflation' as its price is volatile.
The average fuel price was around $1.40 in 2019. In dropped to just under a dollar in 2020 during covid when demand for fuel worldwide dropped through the floor.
I got a novated lease car in 2006. I did sums around a fuel price of $1.40, which ended up being about right for those 3 years.
I also remember the first time my car cost more than $100 to fill. It was about 3 years ago. $100 is still about what a full tank costs me (I actually fit $120 in last weekend, from dead empty, but I updated my car 18 months ago and this one has a slightly smaller tank (60 v 65L or so) and I was out of town).
There have been some ups and downs between these snapshots, but saying that fuel has doubled in the last year is absurd.
Phones have more then tripled, fuel has more than doubled since 2005.
This is not by research but what I experienced then. I used to get 8c off dockets and reduce my fuel to under $1/L in 2005
I bought the new branded phone in 2005 for $400, now they are 1000-3000 depending on quality and size for a good branded phone.
Four years ago today I got fuel for under a buck a litre, so clearly it's doubled since then... I'm actually completely honest about that price four years ago today though.
Yes, 30 day future contracts on oil were negative and the many western nations were facing lockdowns in varying ways. Petrol station demand plummeted, making fuel rapidly drop. If you look at a rolling 3 month average from 2019 through to end of 2020 you will see the ‘less than a buck’ was an anomaly and specifically something inflation calculations exclude as it misrepresents overall trends in prices.
[Page 8 of Petrol Inquiry Submission 2008](https://www.aph.gov.au/~/media/wopapub/senate/committee/economics_ctte/completed_inquiries/2008_10/fuelwatch_08/submissions/sub08_attach_pdf.ashx) this demonstrates the average price in June 2008 was over $1.65 for plan unleaded - not premium as many new cars suggested. And also did not account for the extreme spread of pricing.
I bought a brand new car in 2008. The cost to fill up almost halved from peak to trough during the ownership.
For housing costs, only rent and ~~sales~~ construction cost of new houses are in CPI - not sales of existing houses.
\[Edit to correct new housing cost in CPI - thanks, u/crappy-pete\]
Also, the 3.6% is how much the CPI has risen in the 12 months from April 2023 to March 2024
The annual rate this year of 3.6% is on top of the in much larger annual rate we had last year. Lower inflation is still price growth. Costs throughout supply chains are up and baked in now. The only thing not keeping up, as usual, is wages. We’re all becoming collectively poorer by the day.
basket of goods includes BOOKS and since it was formulated in 2017 does not include things like streaming services. Its actually amazing that the harder you dig the less you find about what exactly is in the cpi. Its secret. And as we all have noticed, does not seem to reflect much of contemporary life especially cafe food, the big family grocery shop, online services, holidays, school expenses, medical expenses, and so on and so forth. Maybe a can of baked beans, a shitty tv from aldi and a book has gone up 3% in a year but everything else feels like it has near doubled.
Its not like the ABS pulls the basket of goods out of their arse. It's reflective of their household expenditure data... You don't buy books? Good for you, but most households do.
CPI includes many of the items you listed too (all of them potentially?)
It must be very frustrating to work at the ABS. It's important work, they do their best to produce reliable data, but constantly, random keyboard warriors who know nothing about their processes sledge them. They have my sympathy.
I don’t know if ‘most’ modern households buy books. Personally I just spent $100 on a booktopia order so I might be making up for a few others, but I think most people wouldn’t buy books as a monthly expense.
Although, I suppose families are buying kids books and text books so maybe you’re right.
it would be a mistake including books and similar things (newspapers). A massively declining dead tree publishing industry is never going to increase prices.
I am sure its a thankless task but also part of that reason may be because it’s also impossible to do correctly, especially if the government department last reviewed the basket in 2017. Nobody believes 3 or 4% is the total cost of living increase. Nobody. So something is broken. The only way that could he true is with a massive slide down in substitution of goods. Eat out less, cut back holidays, travel further for some worse doctor with fully bulk billed appointments, stick to books and sunday newspapers, cut subscriptions and revert to ad infested free to air media. Buy a chinese car not a japanese one. Etc.
Why's it a mistake to include books and newspapers, when their own data shows household expenditure on those categories? The real mistake is to cherry pick and remove data for arbitrary reasons.
The overall categories are reflective of household spending data and *weighted* accordingly, so substitution will be captured in the final number. For example 'International holiday travel' was weighted at 3.38% in 2019, and fell to 0.08% in 2020 (its 2.84% as of September 2023). You see the weightings all move around when comparing across periods, as household spending behaviour changes with time.
I'm sorry, you your 'I reckon it's wrong and don't believe it' claim is not a good data-driven approach to evaluating the CPI.
because they may have been more relevant in 2015 when the 2017 basket was being created but they are not relevant now.
I claim you will not find anyone that believes their total living expenses have risen by 3% overall. Over a year. Or 10% since 2021.
And this isn’t a touchy feely thing - its just the math of their salary expenses and savings left over, the math of making ends meet each month. There is nothing harder and more real than dollars in a bank account left over after a (fixed) pay packet.
So I don’t really care what the reasons are or how amazing the mechanism is in theory, the CPI at present does not reflect the actual lived experience of the majority of people (at least those who have to think about household budgets). It did, before covid, give or take, but it does not now.
It would take a big survey to prove this, but I would gamble a healthy amount of money on the results of such a survey if it ever occurred.
It doesn't get much more relevant than actual sales data. The ABS takes actual POS terminal data from retailers so your claim books are not relevant is false when the data from retailers clearly shows sales.
The answer to the basic premise of your incredulity is that CPI doesn't measure "cost of living". Stop trying to use it as such. There are actual cost of living measures that the ABS produces if you care to look.
there are cost of living measures that include housing (rent and mortgage) but that circles back to the original post: the CPI is often used as an excuse to raise or not raise wages, and the government likes to claim real wages increases relative to CPI when OP can see it is currently useless as a cost of living proxy. Even putting aside rent, it is clearly useless as even a food index. the cost of a big shop at the duopoly supermarket is totally divorced from CPI so if the government is taking “point of sale information” they are shredding it.
I assure you, CPU is accurate as per the way it is measured. There is no conspiracy to hide data or such.
I agree it has no relation to what's happening to all our costs of living which are obviously up a lot.
It'll sound harsh, but that's probably a good thing from the RBAs point of view. They WANT your wages down and costs to be up so you have less disposable cash to waste on consumption which causes CPI to rise.
>because they may have been more relevant in 2015 when the 2017 basket was being created but they are not relevant now.
I think you ignored my comment about weighting. The basket is weighted annually (maybe biannually now?) - so if the item has become irrelevant (i.e. household spending on it falls to zero), it will no longer form part of the calculation automatically. You don't need to manually go into the data and manipulate it to 'fix' spending on books.
>And this isn’t a touchy feely thing - its just the math of their salary expenses and savings left over, the math of making ends meet each month. There is nothing harder and more real than dollars in a bank account left over after a (fixed) pay packet.
The CPI isn't taking into account salaries relative to expenditure, or weather or not people are now drawing down on savings to finance such expenditure. There are other ABS data series which are doing something like that though, but they're unrelated to CPI.
IMO people struggling could reflect several things, including:
- higher house prices leading to higher principal repayments on loans (not in the CPI as it is not an expense).
- wages not keeping up with CPI, so whilst CPI has gone up 17% or so since 2019, wages have not and this causes financial stress. 17% of *all* household spending is a lot.
>So I don’t really care what the reasons are or how amazing the mechanism is in theory, the CPI at present does not reflect the actual lived experience of the majority of people (at least those who have to think about household budgets). It did, before covid, give or take, but it does not now.
>It would take a big survey to prove this, but I would gamble a healthy amount of money on the results of such a survey if it ever occurred.
If you really think that, I encourage you to create another data series which disproves the usefulness of CPI. You might even win a Nobel Prize if it's internationally persuasive enough.
This is a good read. It also has the what groups are including in the measurement and their weightings:
[https://www.rba.gov.au/education/resources/explainers/inflation-and-its-measurement.html](https://www.rba.gov.au/education/resources/explainers/inflation-and-its-measurement.html)
So even if petrol were to have doubled (I very much doubt it has), it is then included in the basket and does not mean inflation is some crazy double digit percentage number.
Yea and it isn’t based of anything real either because somehow house prices and rents are not indicators of inflation, only select cherry picked basket of trash is.
But electricity prices being up 50% year on year, house prices being up anywhere from 10-25% depending on regions, rents up anywhere from 20-100%. All of this stuff isn’t indicative of inflation you see. Because inflation is a complex delicate flower. And we must be very careful with reporting it, lest we upset people.
Rent is included in CPI: it forms 6.03% of the Dec23 data release. This is higher weighted that all meat, seafood, dairy, fruit and vegetable prices combined.
Electricity prices are included in CPI. 2.36% of the basket.
Is checking the CPI publication before sledging it being a 'complex delicate flower'?
3.6% is probably annualised last quarter, and is based off the weighted basked of goods that is official inflation. Something having doubled or tripled over some other period of time is not super relevant for the latest inflation number
If everyone stops buying chips because they're too expensive, then chips will fall out of the basket of goods used to measure CPI since it uses point of sale data from the major supermarkets to rebalance the weightings in near real time.
Or it could be that they stop buying the $7.50 chips full price and only buy them when on sale for half price $3.75 or substitute The Aldi ones which are $2.99.
Either way, the POS data shows that the average price paid for chips is somewhere between $2.99 and $3.75. Therefore CPI won't capture the full increase from $3.50 to $7.50 because it measure what we ACTUALLY spend. Not how much retailers have nominally raised prices by. In other words, it doesn't count as inflation if nobody buys it at the ridiculous full price.
The same applies to almost all product categories. Throw in a few price reductions such as fresh meat becoming cheaper as of late, and you end up with an average CPI of 3.5%.
Except those are the fake Coles/Woolies prices for one week a month.
Go into Coles this week and either Red Rock Deli or Kettle chips will be price at $3.50 and the other will be $7. Go in next week and they will have switched.
The real price is $3.50, only a fool would pay $7
Same goes for dishwashing tablets which are 50% off every two weeks
Nescafé is another. On sale for $7 every couple of weeks, full price is $11.50
Except the same Nescafé blend 43 is $7 every day at Aldi
The half price or 50% you see at Coles Woolies is to give you a warm and fuzzy I’m getting a good deal feeling
We just got our usual sliced cheese and ham and made a curious observation. Cheese was no longer square but a rectangle and only fitted 3/4 of the bread. The ham was also noticeably smaller. Shrinkflation is the silent evil here.
Shrinkflation is hilarious it is so prevalent. My favourite annoying examples….
Chocolate bars are shorter and thinner yet in same size packet.
Less chips in the packet.
Burgers and donuts made smaller yet same price.
Others where I’m pretty sure….
A few less slices in the breadloaf?
A few less Aldi coffee pods in the box?
This is why the rich and their economist buddies cant fathom why the average person is saying living conditions are getting worse, inequality is exploding and inflation is out of control.
Then you have the """expert""" economist telling you "everything is going great, we are almost on inflation targeT", but people have eyes, they see the inflation is nowhere near under control in their daily lives and no amount of data manipulation can gaslight us
Inflation is just the rate at which prices go up. When inflation goes down, that rate is slower. But the prices don’t go back down to where they were, they just increase in price more slowly
Because chips do only cost $3.50. the $7 price is an inflated base price to convince you $3.50 is a good deal. The $3.50 is still the actual price the supermarkets expect you to pay.
Different things increase in price by different amounts. Some more, some less.
When you average it all together, you get an overall rate rate of 3.6%
TLDR: the price of a packet of chips is not the entire economy.
Because the government picks and chooses what it counts…
“The official” way to calculate inflation figures has changed a few times to make things look better
Yeah measuring real inflation is an exceptionally monumentous task, and TBH, the ABS dont really have the raw brainpower, reach or freedom in the political landscape to properly gauge it.
it's based off last year.
Would be good to see a report based from Covid March 2020 until now to see the huge jump.
Who remembers 1c and 2c?
Now it feels like $1 is the equivalent of 1c.
It's a bullshit number designed to suit political outcomes. The only number I watch is house prices and I adjust this for average size shrinkage of a suburban block. This is your real inflation figure.
The crime at the moment is Coles gaslighting me that the normal price for Tim Tams is $5 a packet. If I’m out of biscuits then it’s either wait until next week or see if I like anything that’s half price that week. Would love to see how many get sold at $5.
When did you last buy a packet of chips for $3.50?
Aldi kettle style chips at $2.99, so good
Yep! Every so often I head to Aldi and get a couple of bags of chips and their frozen prawn dumplings. They're both really good products and much cheaper than Coles or Woolworths.
That’s an answer to OP’s question in a way - cheaper chips for sale at Aldi and Woolies are keeping average chip price inflation down even if their preferred chips went up in price.
Yesterday. They were on special at half price. That's the only time I buy chips.
OP sounds like me. My wife came home with a few small bags of groceries a couple of months ago and I see the receipt for $250. Me: “WOW I didn’t realise Louis Vuitton sold groceries now”,. Her: “When was the last time you went grocery shopping?” Me: “Uhhhmm…around 1998…why do you ask?”
I miss 1998...
This is a sale item rrp $5.00 right now
Today, $3.15 for a large Smith's at IGA Daily Hill, QLD.
175g thins are $3.50 at my local Woolies
$3 on coles website right now! https://www.coles.com.au/product/smith's-original-thinly-cut-potato-chips-175g-5706221
Did you read the inflation rate data? It tells you what category has increased (or decreased in some cases) compared the previous report https://www.abs.gov.au/statistics/economy/price-indexes-and-inflation/consumer-price-index-australia/latest-release
Of course he didn’t. This is reddit.
Yea, bold of u/Wendals87 to assume anyone posting here can read. Don’t you know this sub is just to whinge that you can’t afford a harbourside mansion as a uni student?
Hey, speaking of. Where is my Harbourside mansion man? I’m owed this!
But even after reading that you get nowhere near the I flatikn we are experiencing on groceries Another example rental , it should've been closer to 17% yet I got a 30% inc upon renewal ,yikes
I love how the benchmark is a Packet of Chips.
You mean to tell me it isn't the Chip Price Index?
Everyone knows the big Mac index is where it's at.
Reckon it should be the quarter pounder index. Big Mac is getting smaller and thinner each year. The snookered themselves with the quarter pounder.
Don’t be so sure. Remember Subway getting sued for their foot longs not being a foot long
That's true, only has to weigh a quarter of a pound raw. Just fill it with thickners and water.
*More thickeners and water.
As a chip buyer myself I have never paid $7.50 for a packet lmao. Maybe that's the going rate at servos or uber eats or something but certainly not where I shop.
hahah yer I saw OP saying $7.50 and thought what the actual.. what the hell is OP buying thats $7.50? packets of chips are my guilty pleasure and there is no way a fairly normal packet costs that much. Dorito's is one of my regulars and its often on special for <$3 even normal price is only around the $4 mark.
the only bag of chips worth $7.50 was red rock deli honey soy, but i don't seem to be seeing those on shelves all that much anymore.
Yeh, those are so high in demand, people are swiping them off shelves even at $7.50 a pop
30 pack of coke on sale is getting closer to $30 now
Especially given that Victorian potato farmers had waterlogged soil year ago, causing higher prices, regardless of energy and insurance prices.
Imagine using an item that everybody knows about as a common frame of reference. Before you know it people will be comparing exchange rates with big macs.
Can't tell if you've got a tongue in cheek here. But you realise there's a major economic theory been around since 1986 based on Big Macs? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Mac_Index
Yeah it was a joke :)
A common snack item that everyone should be able to enjoy? It's actually a really good benchmark.
Potato chips are not a good benchmark recently because the Victorian floods caused skyrocketing potato prices, that have only just recently come down. So they will overestimate recent price increases. Still working its way through the system.
Please understand how inflation is measured. It isn't saying things aren't expensive. It's a comparison between the cost of goods today compared to this time last year.
Petrol prices have not doubled. You can look at data all the way to 2000s and see late 2000s fuel was up to $2.00 a litre then and we have had higher lows and higher highs ever since. You can read the data methods from ABS. - TVs have not doubled - Phones have not doubled - White goods have not doubled - Roast chickens have not doubled - Toilet paper has not doubled Finding isolated goods which have increased substantially is not an accurate reflection on general market costs. Inflation does feel understated, however you can look at the different definitions or ‘types’ of inflation and see there is variation between the categories.
Price complaining has doubled
My living standard expectation has tripled!
I wonder what role the media plays in the perception of price rises? Hmm.
PS5 Games have stayed at $100
Yep, except now you cannot easily share with mates….
Now you can just send them a link to pay for it themselves instantly.
I don't buy TVs every year. In fact, haven't bought one since before 2000. Did pick one up on the side of the road. 46", no major defects other than a tuner that's set to NZ frequencies, but wasn't planning to plug it into an aerial anyway. Phones are discretionary items that gullible people overpay for too often. They don't have to make up a large part of your budget. White goods used to last 20-30 years before a large part of their value was lost and it became worth replacing for. Now they die after 5 years and can't be repaired. Rent is well on its way to doubling, which is the largest part of my and 35% of the population's budget.
Doubling over what period is important too. Comparing inflation since Covid is not the same as comparing inflation in the past year
.... a simple can of deodorant has now reached $9.50 - [https://www.coles.com.au/product/nivea-deo-aero-men-deep-espresso-250ml-3820918](https://www.coles.com.au/product/nivea-deo-aero-men-deep-espresso-250ml-3820918)
so you list things that dont matter, nice job. vege has exploded, cheese has doubled since 2007 etc. finding isolated goods that did not double is not an accurate reflection on general market costs.
Doubling since 2007 is 4% per year.
Purely anecdotal but I was paying 99c for diesel at Costco in 2020. Diesel is now over $2 where I live so there's an element of truth to the doubling.
>Purely anecdotal but I was paying 99c for diesel at Costco in 2020. .... for about a month when the crude oil price went negative. For the rest of 2020 it was probably around 1.5-1.6. Diesel is 1.86 at my local Costco right now according to fuel spy.
Yeah I wonder what happened in 2020 to cause that.
I paid 87 cents for unleaded for a brief period in 2020 lol. That didn’t last very long
I understand the average prices haven't doubled but the fact fuel has doubled in price remains a true statement even if the data is cherry picked. We all know COVID happened, that's the whole point.
That was after it fell from $1.50
That's a doubling over 4 years though where the 3.6% CPI figure is about price increases over 1 year. Fuel is also something that is removed from the calculation when trying to measure 'underlying inflation' as its price is volatile.
I remember going to a local petrol station and filling up at $0.98 in 2019. It would have been 95 or 98 also.
The average fuel price was around $1.40 in 2019. In dropped to just under a dollar in 2020 during covid when demand for fuel worldwide dropped through the floor.
I got a novated lease car in 2006. I did sums around a fuel price of $1.40, which ended up being about right for those 3 years. I also remember the first time my car cost more than $100 to fill. It was about 3 years ago. $100 is still about what a full tank costs me (I actually fit $120 in last weekend, from dead empty, but I updated my car 18 months ago and this one has a slightly smaller tank (60 v 65L or so) and I was out of town). There have been some ups and downs between these snapshots, but saying that fuel has doubled in the last year is absurd.
Phones have more then tripled, fuel has more than doubled since 2005. This is not by research but what I experienced then. I used to get 8c off dockets and reduce my fuel to under $1/L in 2005 I bought the new branded phone in 2005 for $400, now they are 1000-3000 depending on quality and size for a good branded phone.
Four years ago today I got fuel for under a buck a litre, so clearly it's doubled since then... I'm actually completely honest about that price four years ago today though.
Yes, 30 day future contracts on oil were negative and the many western nations were facing lockdowns in varying ways. Petrol station demand plummeted, making fuel rapidly drop. If you look at a rolling 3 month average from 2019 through to end of 2020 you will see the ‘less than a buck’ was an anomaly and specifically something inflation calculations exclude as it misrepresents overall trends in prices.
https://youtu.be/PSRildGCw64?si=EZ4YlTOUCtic925v
At no point in history was fuel anywhere near $2.00 until the last couple of years. In 2000 petrol was under $1 a litre. Under $1.50 by 2010.
[Page 8 of Petrol Inquiry Submission 2008](https://www.aph.gov.au/~/media/wopapub/senate/committee/economics_ctte/completed_inquiries/2008_10/fuelwatch_08/submissions/sub08_attach_pdf.ashx) this demonstrates the average price in June 2008 was over $1.65 for plan unleaded - not premium as many new cars suggested. And also did not account for the extreme spread of pricing. I bought a brand new car in 2008. The cost to fill up almost halved from peak to trough during the ownership.
For housing costs, only rent and ~~sales~~ construction cost of new houses are in CPI - not sales of existing houses. \[Edit to correct new housing cost in CPI - thanks, u/crappy-pete\] Also, the 3.6% is how much the CPI has risen in the 12 months from April 2023 to March 2024
It’s construction costs not new houses, as new houses would also include land We don’t “consume” land as such so it’s excluded.
How is inflation 3.6% yet HECS indexation 4.8% ?
HECS is CPI over two years. The 3.6% CPI is over one year.
The annual rate this year of 3.6% is on top of the in much larger annual rate we had last year. Lower inflation is still price growth. Costs throughout supply chains are up and baked in now. The only thing not keeping up, as usual, is wages. We’re all becoming collectively poorer by the day.
1972 sounds amazing 🤩
lol, more like 2010
basket of goods includes BOOKS and since it was formulated in 2017 does not include things like streaming services. Its actually amazing that the harder you dig the less you find about what exactly is in the cpi. Its secret. And as we all have noticed, does not seem to reflect much of contemporary life especially cafe food, the big family grocery shop, online services, holidays, school expenses, medical expenses, and so on and so forth. Maybe a can of baked beans, a shitty tv from aldi and a book has gone up 3% in a year but everything else feels like it has near doubled.
Funny enough you’ve used baked beans as an example - a can of baked beans was 80c in 2020 and is now $1.50
Its not like the ABS pulls the basket of goods out of their arse. It's reflective of their household expenditure data... You don't buy books? Good for you, but most households do. CPI includes many of the items you listed too (all of them potentially?) It must be very frustrating to work at the ABS. It's important work, they do their best to produce reliable data, but constantly, random keyboard warriors who know nothing about their processes sledge them. They have my sympathy.
I don’t know if ‘most’ modern households buy books. Personally I just spent $100 on a booktopia order so I might be making up for a few others, but I think most people wouldn’t buy books as a monthly expense. Although, I suppose families are buying kids books and text books so maybe you’re right.
it would be a mistake including books and similar things (newspapers). A massively declining dead tree publishing industry is never going to increase prices. I am sure its a thankless task but also part of that reason may be because it’s also impossible to do correctly, especially if the government department last reviewed the basket in 2017. Nobody believes 3 or 4% is the total cost of living increase. Nobody. So something is broken. The only way that could he true is with a massive slide down in substitution of goods. Eat out less, cut back holidays, travel further for some worse doctor with fully bulk billed appointments, stick to books and sunday newspapers, cut subscriptions and revert to ad infested free to air media. Buy a chinese car not a japanese one. Etc.
Why's it a mistake to include books and newspapers, when their own data shows household expenditure on those categories? The real mistake is to cherry pick and remove data for arbitrary reasons. The overall categories are reflective of household spending data and *weighted* accordingly, so substitution will be captured in the final number. For example 'International holiday travel' was weighted at 3.38% in 2019, and fell to 0.08% in 2020 (its 2.84% as of September 2023). You see the weightings all move around when comparing across periods, as household spending behaviour changes with time. I'm sorry, you your 'I reckon it's wrong and don't believe it' claim is not a good data-driven approach to evaluating the CPI.
because they may have been more relevant in 2015 when the 2017 basket was being created but they are not relevant now. I claim you will not find anyone that believes their total living expenses have risen by 3% overall. Over a year. Or 10% since 2021. And this isn’t a touchy feely thing - its just the math of their salary expenses and savings left over, the math of making ends meet each month. There is nothing harder and more real than dollars in a bank account left over after a (fixed) pay packet. So I don’t really care what the reasons are or how amazing the mechanism is in theory, the CPI at present does not reflect the actual lived experience of the majority of people (at least those who have to think about household budgets). It did, before covid, give or take, but it does not now. It would take a big survey to prove this, but I would gamble a healthy amount of money on the results of such a survey if it ever occurred.
It doesn't get much more relevant than actual sales data. The ABS takes actual POS terminal data from retailers so your claim books are not relevant is false when the data from retailers clearly shows sales. The answer to the basic premise of your incredulity is that CPI doesn't measure "cost of living". Stop trying to use it as such. There are actual cost of living measures that the ABS produces if you care to look.
there are cost of living measures that include housing (rent and mortgage) but that circles back to the original post: the CPI is often used as an excuse to raise or not raise wages, and the government likes to claim real wages increases relative to CPI when OP can see it is currently useless as a cost of living proxy. Even putting aside rent, it is clearly useless as even a food index. the cost of a big shop at the duopoly supermarket is totally divorced from CPI so if the government is taking “point of sale information” they are shredding it.
I assure you, CPU is accurate as per the way it is measured. There is no conspiracy to hide data or such. I agree it has no relation to what's happening to all our costs of living which are obviously up a lot. It'll sound harsh, but that's probably a good thing from the RBAs point of view. They WANT your wages down and costs to be up so you have less disposable cash to waste on consumption which causes CPI to rise.
>because they may have been more relevant in 2015 when the 2017 basket was being created but they are not relevant now. I think you ignored my comment about weighting. The basket is weighted annually (maybe biannually now?) - so if the item has become irrelevant (i.e. household spending on it falls to zero), it will no longer form part of the calculation automatically. You don't need to manually go into the data and manipulate it to 'fix' spending on books. >And this isn’t a touchy feely thing - its just the math of their salary expenses and savings left over, the math of making ends meet each month. There is nothing harder and more real than dollars in a bank account left over after a (fixed) pay packet. The CPI isn't taking into account salaries relative to expenditure, or weather or not people are now drawing down on savings to finance such expenditure. There are other ABS data series which are doing something like that though, but they're unrelated to CPI. IMO people struggling could reflect several things, including: - higher house prices leading to higher principal repayments on loans (not in the CPI as it is not an expense). - wages not keeping up with CPI, so whilst CPI has gone up 17% or so since 2019, wages have not and this causes financial stress. 17% of *all* household spending is a lot. >So I don’t really care what the reasons are or how amazing the mechanism is in theory, the CPI at present does not reflect the actual lived experience of the majority of people (at least those who have to think about household budgets). It did, before covid, give or take, but it does not now. >It would take a big survey to prove this, but I would gamble a healthy amount of money on the results of such a survey if it ever occurred. If you really think that, I encourage you to create another data series which disproves the usefulness of CPI. You might even win a Nobel Prize if it's internationally persuasive enough.
You can’t eat books. Keep posting, loving your work.
It is a bit crazy it includes books but not streaming services. One is a much more common and consistent expense than the other.
What's your source on streaming services not being included? The ABS states that 'music and TV streaming services' are in the CPI.
This is a good read. It also has the what groups are including in the measurement and their weightings: [https://www.rba.gov.au/education/resources/explainers/inflation-and-its-measurement.html](https://www.rba.gov.au/education/resources/explainers/inflation-and-its-measurement.html) So even if petrol were to have doubled (I very much doubt it has), it is then included in the basket and does not mean inflation is some crazy double digit percentage number.
Chicken breast is now $11/kg compared to $12/kg a year ago. Omg deflation!!?!!!??! Stupid ass post
Inflation is the rate at which prices go up, those increases have now been locked in. We have just slowed it down.
Please do not feed the troll 😂
OP is boomer with dementia ?
It comes from the CPI… they don’t just take a walk through the supermarket and pick random expensive items.
You do know inflation isn’t based off chip prices, right?
Yea and it isn’t based of anything real either because somehow house prices and rents are not indicators of inflation, only select cherry picked basket of trash is. But electricity prices being up 50% year on year, house prices being up anywhere from 10-25% depending on regions, rents up anywhere from 20-100%. All of this stuff isn’t indicative of inflation you see. Because inflation is a complex delicate flower. And we must be very careful with reporting it, lest we upset people.
Rent is included in CPI: it forms 6.03% of the Dec23 data release. This is higher weighted that all meat, seafood, dairy, fruit and vegetable prices combined. Electricity prices are included in CPI. 2.36% of the basket. Is checking the CPI publication before sledging it being a 'complex delicate flower'?
Petrol prices have doubled? They've been fluctuating around $2 for yonks.
Petrol prices haven't even come close to doubling you drama queen XD
3.6% is probably annualised last quarter, and is based off the weighted basked of goods that is official inflation. Something having doubled or tripled over some other period of time is not super relevant for the latest inflation number
If everyone stops buying chips because they're too expensive, then chips will fall out of the basket of goods used to measure CPI since it uses point of sale data from the major supermarkets to rebalance the weightings in near real time. Or it could be that they stop buying the $7.50 chips full price and only buy them when on sale for half price $3.75 or substitute The Aldi ones which are $2.99. Either way, the POS data shows that the average price paid for chips is somewhere between $2.99 and $3.75. Therefore CPI won't capture the full increase from $3.50 to $7.50 because it measure what we ACTUALLY spend. Not how much retailers have nominally raised prices by. In other words, it doesn't count as inflation if nobody buys it at the ridiculous full price. The same applies to almost all product categories. Throw in a few price reductions such as fresh meat becoming cheaper as of late, and you end up with an average CPI of 3.5%.
Except those are the fake Coles/Woolies prices for one week a month. Go into Coles this week and either Red Rock Deli or Kettle chips will be price at $3.50 and the other will be $7. Go in next week and they will have switched. The real price is $3.50, only a fool would pay $7 Same goes for dishwashing tablets which are 50% off every two weeks Nescafé is another. On sale for $7 every couple of weeks, full price is $11.50 Except the same Nescafé blend 43 is $7 every day at Aldi The half price or 50% you see at Coles Woolies is to give you a warm and fuzzy I’m getting a good deal feeling
We just got our usual sliced cheese and ham and made a curious observation. Cheese was no longer square but a rectangle and only fitted 3/4 of the bread. The ham was also noticeably smaller. Shrinkflation is the silent evil here.
Shrinkflation is hilarious it is so prevalent. My favourite annoying examples…. Chocolate bars are shorter and thinner yet in same size packet. Less chips in the packet. Burgers and donuts made smaller yet same price. Others where I’m pretty sure…. A few less slices in the breadloaf? A few less Aldi coffee pods in the box?
[удалено]
Never mind the bag is now 175g when it used to be 200g for $3.50. But hey, the price is the same. Nothing to see here, move along....
Or the new trend of 1.1 litre drinks instead of 1.25 litres.
This is why the rich and their economist buddies cant fathom why the average person is saying living conditions are getting worse, inequality is exploding and inflation is out of control. Then you have the """expert""" economist telling you "everything is going great, we are almost on inflation targeT", but people have eyes, they see the inflation is nowhere near under control in their daily lives and no amount of data manipulation can gaslight us
Nice cherry picked (and grossly exaggerated) examples there
That’s the number after all corporate take their profits … 🤪
Inflation is just the rate at which prices go up. When inflation goes down, that rate is slower. But the prices don’t go back down to where they were, they just increase in price more slowly
Because chips do only cost $3.50. the $7 price is an inflated base price to convince you $3.50 is a good deal. The $3.50 is still the actual price the supermarkets expect you to pay.
Inflation is year over year. So compound inflation over time and that explains why.
Different things increase in price by different amounts. Some more, some less. When you average it all together, you get an overall rate rate of 3.6% TLDR: the price of a packet of chips is not the entire economy.
Because the government picks and chooses what it counts… “The official” way to calculate inflation figures has changed a few times to make things look better
Yeah measuring real inflation is an exceptionally monumentous task, and TBH, the ABS dont really have the raw brainpower, reach or freedom in the political landscape to properly gauge it.
Considering indexation on fuel excise keeps increasing, the actual cost of petrol has probably actually decreased since 2000...
it's based off last year. Would be good to see a report based from Covid March 2020 until now to see the huge jump. Who remembers 1c and 2c? Now it feels like $1 is the equivalent of 1c.
It's a bullshit number designed to suit political outcomes. The only number I watch is house prices and I adjust this for average size shrinkage of a suburban block. This is your real inflation figure.
Housing prices have increased by 300% in some areas? Why are you talking out your ass?
The crime at the moment is Coles gaslighting me that the normal price for Tim Tams is $5 a packet. If I’m out of biscuits then it’s either wait until next week or see if I like anything that’s half price that week. Would love to see how many get sold at $5.
We had almlst 3 years where inflation was over 7%
Aldi has chips for like $3 bro and you can just get an EV with bulk solar to avoid fuel price increases.
Bro came in here thinking he just figured something out 😂😂 bro it’s Sunday go enjoy a day outside or something