> The rally has also been supported by a weaker yen, which has shed about 6% against the dollar so far this year and seems on track to drop to to 33-year lows touched late last year.
We just got back from Tokyo and the prices for everything were crazy low. Ordered a bunch of sushi at a mall sushi place in Kyoto for what it would cost for Chipotle in DC. It was a huge shock when we flew back through SF and paid $13 each for a taco truck burrito in Millbrae.
The Japanese folks I’ve spoken to are pretty grumbly about the weak yen, though.
The other side of this coin is that exports are very difficult. My dad is a nut farmer and the business is completely unsustainable right now. Expenses are through the roof while simultaneously crop prices are at all time lows due to the collapse of exports. It's nuts.
We Canadians used to regularly talk about how cheap the US was, and load up on gas, food, beer, cheese and all the rest when staying in cheap hotels and getting cheap meals with cheap entertainment (concerts, sporting events, etc.). If you could be bothered electronics were cheap, cars were cheap, clothes were cheap, etc. etc.
In the last ~12 months I have been floored how expensive life in the US is now. I was just down two weeks ago, and everything was either the same dollar number as Canada or higher, but it's in US dollars.
This was a very very brief moment when the CAD appreciated. Are you sure you didn’t just end up coming of age at a particular moment, specifically 2006-2012?
Because otherwise the exchange rate has been about where it is now to substantially worse for the rest of the data set.
I read their comment differently than you did. I think the point they are making about exchange rates goes like this:
The dollar amount in CAD was normally higher than the equivalent in USD. For example, next to the bar code on the back of a paperback, it would list the prices as $15 USD or $20 CAD. Many other goods have similar price differences.
Lately in the US it seems like a lot of prices are increasing to the same number value, despite the exchange rate.
They are doing it with wage growth. Inflation is likely a result of high employment levels. There are more jobs than candidates.
Personally I believe it is due to the last of the boomers retiring. Economists/analysts are not used to thinking about demographics and they have a blind spot on this ever more important topic.
What an absurd notion. As a first generation immigrant, I’m in no way “just as American” as my wife, whose family settled the west coast in the wagon trails. That assertion reduces the concept of nationality to nothing. If my ancestors had shaped the America that exists today it would look very different!
Are you suggesting immigrants, especially ones that immigrate and follow the byzantine naturalization process, and build a life here, many times working the most undesirable jobs for low pay, do not shape the America that exists today?
Yes, they do shape America--by making it poorer, more socialist (but I repeat myself), and less unique i.e. more like the rest of the world--low-trust societies with rain-soaked garbage strewn everywhere
> As a first generation immigrant, I’m in no way “just as American” as my wife, whose family settled the west coast in the wagon trails.
I don't know who convinced you of this notion, but it's 100% horseshit. You absolutely are just as much of an American as anyone else living here. America as a country is founded on the contributions of all of the people who moved here. The concept of "nationality" meaning you must have roots here, or that you must look like an "American", is just complete garbage. If you're a citizen, you're an American, and that's all there is to it.
100%! I posted data on American ancestry below which is pretty eye opening.
My grandfather was an American of German ancestry and served in the 95th infantry fighting in Europe in WW2. He's just as American as the wagon trail people. And Arnold Schwarzenegger is just as American as both of them too.
> I don't know who convinced you of this notion, but it's 100% horseshit.
Marrying an American and observing the massive cultural differences between our families convinced me of it.
> You absolutely are just as much of an American as anyone else living here.
Only if you’re using “american” tautologically to refer to “American citizenship.” And even then, the Constitution recognizes that naturalized citizens are less American than native-born ones, since we can’t run for President.
> America as a country is founded on the contributions of all of the people who moved here.
America is a country founded by British colonists. The country’s legal and political system, and most of its culture, comes from that founding population. Depending on the geography, there’s an overlay of German, Dutch, Italian, or Spanish culture. In specific areas, Americans that are part of the Jewish diaspora have had a significant influence. The influence of almost everyone else is localized or superficial. E.g. you can get Vietnamese or Thai food almost everywhere in the country, but the influence of Vietnamese or Thai language, culture, religion, etc., in American society at large is close to zero.
When people in my home country think of an “American” they think of people of British descent. They don’t think of Italian immigrants. Similarly, if you relocated the population of say Bangladesh to the US, and gave everyone US citizenship, they wouldn’t suddenly become “American.”
Culture matters, and a population’s culture is extremely durable: https://www.sup.org/books/title/?id=35594 (“In The Culture Transplant, Garett Jones documents the cultural foundations of cross-country income differences, showing that immigrants import cultural attitudes from their homelands—toward saving, toward trust, and toward the role of government—that persist for decades, and likely for centuries, in their new national homes. Full assimilation in a generation or two, Jones reports, is a myth.”). The American founders clearly recognized as much when they created a distinction between native-born citizens and naturalized citizens and wrote it into the Constitution.
> When people in my home country think of an “American” they think of people of British descent.
Your home county is just completely wrong in their understanding.
Top 3 Ancestry groups (2015 Census) are actually 1) German, 2) Black/African-American and 3) Mexican. English comes in #5. [1]
If you tally English/Scottish/Welsh, you are only talking about 10% of the US population is British descent. And that was from the Census in 2015. In 2020 they had a White category which was #1, and only 8.2M identified explicitly as English and 1.75M as Welsh.
> if you relocated the population of say Bangladesh to the US, and gave everyone US citizenship, they wouldn’t suddenly become “American.”
They would. You don't have to adhere to some sort of defined American culture or fully assimilate into it, it's not Denmark. If you travel to NYC, Miami, Atlanta, New Orleans, Iowa, LA, San Fran, Dallas, Seattle, you are going to get different people and experiences and cultures. I can assure you they are all very much Americans.
I'd argue that those that worry about a scale of Americanism and where they'd place their own fellow citizens are actually the least American if anything. We can call it the American Culture Paradox. Those that think they are the most American and categorize or judge others are actually the least American!
> The American founders clearly recognized as much when they created a distinction between native-born citizens and naturalized citizens and wrote it into the Constitution.
Yes because they had such massive distrust for the monarchy they didn't want outsiders infiltrating and taking over their new government and country.
> Top 3 Ancestry groups (2015 Census) are actually 1) German, 2) Black/African-American and 3) Mexican. English comes in #5. If you tally English/Scottish/Welsh, you are only talking about 10% of the US population is British descent.
And yet, the vast majority of American language, culture, law, civil institutions, etc., come from the British. That’s why there are deep similarities between the Anglo countries on a variety of dimensions.
> They would. You don't have to adhere to some sort of defined American culture or fully assimilate into it, it's not Denmark.
You’re playing a word game where “American” is some shallow legal distinction, but “Danish” implies both a legal definition and a cultural one. Americans have a distinctive history, culture, and worldview which recent immigrants do not share. My parents were fully formed when they came to America at the age of 39. They aren’t American in anything other than a narrow legal sense. They don’t share American values, they aren’t the product of American history, etc. They are Bangladeshis—they think like Bangladeshis, embrace Bangladeshi values, etc.
My kids are markedly different in worldview and values from my parents (in ways that are often quite disconcerting to me, as an immigrant who is only halfway to American). Other Bangladeshis would instantly recognize that “your kids are Americanized.” You can chafe at the label because it offends your sense of multiculturalism, but the phenomenon exists and is instantly recognizable regardless of what label you use.
> And yet, the vast majority of American language, culture, law, civil institutions, etc., come from the British. That’s why there are deep similarities between the Anglo countries on a variety of dimensions.
And yet the English language is a West Germanic language.
Culture is objectively NOT a vast majority British.
Law - so what. Civil institutions - not really. Country was inspired by Parliament and Magna Carta but devised a better foundation.
The US is nothing like Great Britain. There's vastly more impact from Italians, Irish, Germans, French, Spanish, Mexicans and Blacks in our cities than British. Almost nobody celebrates anything British in any city lol. We celebrate our victory over them and that's it. California and Texas alone are bigger than the entire UK. British descendants are just a blip on the 330M+ population.
Yet you find celebrations and cuisine and other cultures and impact from many other ancestries and heritages. US Infrastructure - Irish and Chinese built railroads. Highway system was derived from the Germans. The British are irrelevant and again, your people back home are just wrong in their understanding.
I'm not playing a word game. You have a very antiquated perspective and I don't think you quite understand America. That's not abnormal. Many you might consider way more American than you don't either.
I understand what you are saying though. I truly do. I just think it's a non-productive perspective for this country. What point does it serve to alienate and put people in a box?
I have Muslim employees. They don't partake in things that others do. It's ok. I know Bangladeshi & Indian men share a bunch of values and perspectives with southern US men over northerners in general too. They also share values with regard to hierarchy/age/position with many New Yorkers and Chicagoans.
No American citizen needs to feel so insecure because they might have different values or don't share a certain culture. People that have never left America don't share the same cultures or values either (north vs south, right vs left). We have distinct regional cultures and we have anomalies even within states (Miami, Vegas, Austin, Chicago).
Your original statement "If my ancestors had shaped the America that exists today it would look very different!"
That's the point of America. At some point there were Blacks, Mexicans, Irish and Italians that felt like that.
Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. And a general belief in exceptionalism is a tradition.
E pluribus enum - out of many, one. That's what happened. And what will continue to happen. Your British narrative is just false.
"They are doing it with wage growth. Inflation is likely a result of high employment levels. There are more jobs than candidates."
There is limited real wage growth and it is mostly concentrated at the bottom end.
There might be more jobs that "qualified" candidates. Companies are still being very picky. A lot of the jobs/employment numbers we are seeing are including more part-time or low wage positions than in the past.
The inflation is mostly because of the increase in money supply in my opinion. The economy is fragile enough that the Fed is talking about a rate drop soon despite inflafion.
Are boomers retiring? Both of my parents are near the traditional retirement age but are planning on working for another decade. Even boomers who do retire often get part time jobs.
They wish they could but they lost their shirts in 08-09 thinking their ATM, I mean houses, would continue to allow them to do nothing and get rich like it had for the prevuois 25 years.
Overvalued by a lot, we expected a full global crash in which so far in history the USA has bounced back first. But instead we pumped out 20% of all USD ever printed, which created a slow burn. As long as the keep rates where they are or higher, we should recover. I personally think rates are too low, and this last week has proven that is the right view, the market can still remain delusional far longer than I can. The longer the unrealistic expectation of rates falling at all this year, just increases the risk we'll have trouble. Cheap cash is gone, you gotta earn it now. Downvote all you like, doesn't change the fact that rates need to stay up or we risk a similar situation as the early 80's.
I mostly agree the market has entirely unrealistic expectations of rates going lower. I think the cause is structural due to the tight employment market which is not going to change any time soon. The period of low inflation and low rates is over and the market analysts are living in the previous decade.
The Fed needs an excuse to return ZIRP. There's no way around it as the economy is now designed around cheap money and inflationary valuations. And for this specific reason I present to you AI.
Generative AI has potential and there are fun experimentations, but nothing game changing for the vast majority of businesses at the moment. People always overestimate short term change a new technology bring. Sure long term as with the internet it will change everything. But for now in the broad picture of the economy this is a toy and the FED doesn’t care about it. “AI” looks more like a Hail Mary for VC before being definitely crushed by high rates at this point.
I somewhat agree with you on some points. Am not all in on AI becoming a main driver for business productivity (not yet at least) but that's not really up to me to decide. It could very well be a flop but we could be calling it no more revolutionary than the fax machine and be wrong about it just like Paul Krugman's infamous prediction in 1998.
The tech boom was as much influenced by silicon valley VC money as it was by the technological solutions themselves. AI fits into the same playbook. It's only rational to look at it in the same lens. The only difference is that tech has hit its limits as we are seeing with the layoffs but AI presents itself as a new vehicle to continue with the inflation.
The reason the Fed care about AI in my view is because it's new a conduit for letting loose the money printer. Once AI begins increasing economic output they'll have their missing piece for ZIRP. Without this, opening the floodgates again will be a catastrophic mistake as the inflation won't match the productivity output.
S&P 500 has hit an ATH not long ago with high rates. The economy seems to be working quite well. There is not even a crash in residential real estate. The commercial real estate is going bust, but there are funds just waiting for current owners to go out of business and buy up the buildings for pennies on the dollar.
"S&P 500 has hit an ATH not long ago with high rates. The economy seems to be working quite well."
The market is not the same as the economy. We are in fact seeing rising consumer debt defaults across various types. Jobs data is not as good as it seems since there are higher percentage of part-time and low wage jobs in the numbers. Consumer spending is stagnating or down in many sectors. Hiring in consumer discretionary industries like restaurants has stagnated too. I'm not sure the economy looking that good, despite the optimism (inflation even?) in the market.
The S&P 500 rally is just 7 stocks and is not a true representative of the real economy anyways. I think you have my argument confused. I'm not saying the U.S is supposed to be in a recession or headed into one.
"I mostly agree the market has entirely unrealistic expectations of rates going lower. I think the cause is structural due to the tight employment market which is not going to change any time soon."
They expect it to go lower because they got used to it over the past decade or so, and the Fed has said they are expecting a rate drop. It's not unrealistic if the people who make up the rates say it will happen. Of course that doesn't make the decison to do so reasonable.
> entirely unrealistic expectations of rates going lower
The Fed has already announced back in December that they are planning to cut rates to 4.6% by the end of 2024 (of course that might change). The bond market consensus is somewhere between 4.25% - 4.75% so how is it “entirely unrealistic”?
Govt debt growth needs to slow. Too much money spent by govt is being wasted on undeserved transfer payments, creating do-nothing jobs and has been a huge contributor to inflation.
Real efficiency is falling because of overspending in the public sector. Fewer people making things everyone wants in the private sector and more people with govt jobs digging holes and filling them in creates inflation.
> As long as the keep rates where they are or higher, we should recover.
This is not the case and is actually impossible. Impossible they will maintain them or higher. And impossible we would recover.
The US is headed towards $1T in interest payments alone annually.
$34T in national debt AND $213T in unfunded liabilities. 2/3 of the budget is non-discretionary
The longer they stay elevated the more the average interest rate on debt goes up. For the US and the world since it's the reserve currency. This pisses everyone off.
Rates will go back down to around 2% because the US AND the world cannot sustain an expensive dollar. There's 65T in eurodollar debt (US dollar denominated debt) globally. [1] I've seen higher estimates too.
"Approximately half of all cross-border loans, international debt securities, and trade invoices are denominated in U.S. dollars, while roughly 40 percent of SWIFT messages and 60 percent of global foreign exchange reserves are in dollars." [2]
We aren't going to end up back around 2% because the Fed wants to. It's because we have to. You cannot maintain the world reserve currency at these rates after everyone got drunk off the lower rates for decades. And you cannot have the debt load we have and maintain these rates or higher. There's no easy way out of a debt spiral.
Just my opinion but rates will go lower. Printing will go into hyperdrive. Inflation will rip. There will be more unrest. Personally, I'm holding inflation-hedging assets.
Historically they are not low at all relative to inflation and considering how highly the government debt to GDP ratio is raising them further would lead to severe issues. Since a surplus or even a balanced federal budget is basically politically (probably financially too) impossible at this point high growth + low rates + predictable moderately high (2-3%) inflation is the only way to keep public debt from spiraling out of control.
> risk a similar situation as the early 80's.
IMHO the early 80s are about as relevant today as the 30s were back then. So a bit but not a lot. The global economy and financial system (and the position US has in it) is extremely different
"As long as the keep rates where they are or higher, we should recover."
Yet the Fed is talking about rate drops. We're also seeing rising consumer defaults and more perilous bank debt. And those great job numbers aren't that great since we're seeing higher part-time and low wage jobs than before. I'm not sure we're going to really avoid anything.
America has always been famous for the fact that everything is extremely cheap. But now I'm seeing videos of people at Costco/Walmart showing the prices of stuff (often while finding an old price label and showing there's been a 50-100% increase over the last year) and it's actually way more expensive than what I pay in the UK.
It’s idiotic. I went to Zermatt and the little grocery store there was cheaper than Seattle Safeway. A ski resort in a land locked country with higher food quality standards that has cheaper food than a coastal US city with a port is absurd.
I think safeway is trying to take over QFC/Kroger so that’s great.
They changed the way we measure inflation big time since the 70s. My bills are up 40% in the last 3 years. The interesting thing is this is far from over. We will see how this ends. I'm not optimistic.
So you're saying that the US Bureau of Labor Statistics should throw their statistical methodology out of the window and instead use your bills to measure inflation?
I doubt the main commenter, meant it that way, why is there any need to bash them ?
It’s a political issue, well criticised and commented on, that governments intentionally game metrics like inflation, etc to look good on paper for incumbent presidents and heads of state.
Also, the inflation rate is a very inconsistent number, different regions of the US has different rent price increases, different cost of labour increases, different product prices for a lot of goods. How can the nation be entirely ruled by one common inflation rate.
All statistics like this which have to target so many regions, environments, and scenarios, always have to make decisions, that sacrifice some scenario or the other, where the “score” is a very poor indicator
This applies not just to inflation, but other metrics like gdp per capita, employment rate, etc.
There is no need for that condescending tone, especially when the author is talking about their increased cost of living, which prolly hurt their purchasing power.
His feelings are correctly placed though. Even though macro economists agree the current methodology is the least wrong, they also agree that the BLS series cannot explain why Americans have stopped saving and gone so deeply in debt. A slight error in BLS methodology, could explain that reality. So comparing the CPI to your own reality is clearly very rational.
His feelings were correctly placed. There was a vibecession last year when consumer sentiment was lower than it had been during the 2008 recession. This was in spite of low unemployment, high growth, high wage growth, low inflation and reasonable gas prices.
The reason behind the low consumer sentiment wasn't a flaw in BLS methodology, no one seriously questions any of the stats I mentioned. Rather, it's that the effect of a couple of years of high inflation continued to weigh on consumers. 6 months of low inflation didn't reverse previous price increases, nor did they forget what prices used to be.
And yet, it's fundamental human nature to adapt to circumstances. Consumer sentiment has actually increased substantially in the last 3 months. Source: American consumers are finally cheering up (The Economist - https://archive.is/vJ7gf).
> The rate of improvement is especially striking. The 30% increase since November marks the survey’s biggest rise over any three-month period in more than three decades. The level remains glum by historical standards: about 15% below its average in the five years before the covid-19 pandemic.
In summary, the BLS' methodology to calculate economic indicators is fine. And assuming those indicators continue their trend, it's likely that consumer sentiment will continue to recover.
You also claim that
> Americans have stopped saving and gone so deeply in debt
There is another household debt graph that I can't find right now that is going up. I suspect the decline in savings rate is being buoyed somewhat by debt.
Such a strange comment. Yes, like most macroeconomists he uses a low pass filtered number (so-called “core inflation”) to look for underlying trends but is quite aware that headline inflation (includes the high frequency fluctuations) is what actual humans see at the store.
And he discussed the used car numbers — such an interesting outlier — as an indicator of supply-side shock.
You can agree or disagree with his Keynesian positions but he’s pretty clear with his thinking and calls out when he was wrong. To the degree macroeconomics can be considered a science, that’s what you want from a scientist, isn’t it?
You’re committing a fallacy of “Appeal to Authority”, even though your comment doesn’t make sense — obviously we need a consistent measure across decades if we want to compare inflation across decades. Comparing two numbers that measure different things is an apples-to-oranges comparison. (Which is what you’re arguing we should do.)
If you use a consistent measure from a 1980s basis, you’ll see that person is correct — as measured using the historic means, we’ve had ~40% inflation in the past few years and the highest rate of inflation in 40 years.
This chart uses the historic measure and bases in 1980.
The Shadowstats numbers are deeply suspicious though; the graph makes it look like Williams is just adding [0] a constant to the BLS figure, which undermines his credibility. I'm also pretty sure he changes his constant every so often because I remember at one point his data implied absurd drops in the GDP and it appears the website has been changed since then.
I'd suggest just referring to the M2 [1]. It is easier to understand, and more available for analysis. Apparently it also gets rid of the stupid "real" price rises that inflation pretends gold is experiencing [2]. It suggests prices should be about 40% higher than pre-pandemic (I checked 2019-11 -> 2023-12) which coincidentally lines up with what justinzollars is reporting.
[0] Well, smoothing in. But the two lines wiggle the same way which suggests we're just using the BLS + an adjustment that is changing in a boring way over time.
> wealth inequality is skyrocketing and at record highs in the US in centuries...
Wealth inequality today is growing and is unconscionable, but just to look at the numbers it was far worse in the gilded age (and of course far far worse during slavery). Knowing that is no excuse for not fighting it, but let's not rely on hyperbole to make a point on HN.
> In addition to the erosion of progressive taxation.
I assume you mean that the progressive nature of the tax code is fading away, in which case I agree with you and consider it a terrible problem. In some states like Texas the tax code is actually quite regressive, but overall the whole country gone quite a bit backwards.
Interestingly, California's tax code is both too regressive and too progressive (though both are in principle fixable). Since most people with any wealth hold it in real estate, prob 13 has made homeowners in lucky locations asset rich but at a low tax rate, which is screwing up attempts to improve the housing situation. And I learned it was "too progressive" in 2008: so much of the state's income came from cap gains of rich people and during the real estate crash (leading to stock market woes), state revenues fell just when a surplus was needed. The same thing is happening now, though I expect it to unwind by the end of 2024. That can be fixed as well by changing the tax mix for the top 1% and above, (which is why I put "too progressive" in quotation marks).
Whenever there's a change in methodology, it's common practice to retroactively recalculate the entire series so that the data are consistent. Economists aren't that dumb.
This still allows for you to choose the metric that best benefits your narrative today, which essentially every bls report has done.
I still remember them removing the people who had been out of the job for xx months during the 2008 recession from the 'unemployed' category. 'oh look unemployment is down!'. '...but so is the labor participation rate...'
Well it's a perpetual dilemma as they have to keep changing: food is now less than 10% of a family's budget while it used to be over 30% as it is in poor countries like Russia (just happened to see that figure last week). People spend money on computers which they didnt' in the 1980s, etc.
> The interesting thing is this is far from over.
What do you think is the cause and why it is far from over? I'm curious, not trying to start an argument
In fact, 2020s inflation (using historic measure) peaked at over 15% while the 1970s spike peaked below 15% — meaning that this latest inflation sets the record compared to the 1970s.
> Responding to prior criticisms made by economist James Hamilton, John Williams explained in a private phone call that Shadowstats does not actually recalculate BLS data, rather, the Shadowstats CPI merely adds a constant to the officially reported numbers.[25]
>> I’m not going back and recalculating the CPI. All I’m doing is going back to the government’s estimates of what the effect would be and using that as an add factor to the reported statistics
Same article says he charges $175/year/subscription since 2006.
I'd love to get paid that much to do a high school level introductory programming assignment. The business logic is literally a one liner X-D
Inflation was consistently very high in the 70s while time time it peaked in 2022 and then went down relatively rapidly. Of course it might rebound but until that happens it’s hardly comparable.
The US inflation did not come out of devaluation of the dollar compared to other currencies. It was internal. What that means for the future however I have no idea.
But considering the US gov deficits I would assume more inflation is to come with actual devaluation.
Apparently many American and European consumer products have pricing that tends to be indexed to USD. According to my wife, the Japanese women on her handbag forums are quite salty about the price of Chanel and such these days.
Sure. As we are salty about the price of Apple products. But how often do you buy this stuff?
Day in and day out, my bowl of Ramen is still 600 JPY.
My veggies come from Aomori and my Milk from Hokkaido. It's fine.
I work in a company that has 95% export and my salary is paid in EUR/JPY and USD (don't ask). So I actually benefit quite a bit. But your average Japanese citizen is just not that much affected. (Unless she buys a lot of imported goods).
Food prices have shot up an insane amount. I was getting milk for 130 yen a carton 3 years ago and now it's 230 and up. Wheat is virtually all imported and prices for that are incredibly high. Even when food is produced locally (only about 38% self-sufficiency rate--most are exports[1]), it depends on foreign materials. e.g. Animals are fed imported grains, plants use imported fertilizers, manufacturing depends on imported materials.
The biggest complaint from Japanese Japanese (not expats paid in USD) is that food prices have blown up tremendously. It's literally daily headline news. But yeah yeah, the underclass is only complaining about their Apple hardware prices.
Did you move here three years ago? 2020-2021 was the heart of COVID deflation. I remember paying 110yen per litre for gasoline at Costco. Nic Hotels were 1万 a night for our family of three.
Any anchoring off late 2020 is super misleading. Milk at 130yen is not a reasonable price before COVID. Wheat to consumers at gyomu super or Costco has not moved in price, which is reasonable consider it has always cost several multiples over wholesale.
Worst has perhaps been sushi. The selection of 110yen sushi had gotten slightly smaller.
Overall, Japan has a lot less inflation than you'd expect considering the exchange rate.
Had you bought 1L milk for 130JPY? It's too cheap even in 2019 so I suspect that it's loss leader on your supermarket. In my area, price jumped from 190 to 230.
One of a big reason why Japanese aren't be hurt so much (compared to Europe?) by inflation is because govt support for raised gas and electricity price. Some foods are made in local, but gas for production and transportation is 100% imported.
That is super true, and not super common knowledge in Japan. The gasoline subsidy was aging out late last year and news started covering the mysterious persistent increase in gasoline prices.
You'd think kishida-san would want more credit for his vote buying haha.
> As we are salty about the price of Apple products. But how often do you buy this stuff?
Even if you splurge on a foreign luxury product once a year, it can seem like a downgrade in standard of living. Perhaps especially so if your special occasion is impacted and meanwhile you’re not seeing any higher affordability of domestic goods.
I mean, my whole family got a kick out of spending much less than expected for a week while we were in Japan, even though the other 51 weeks this year we will be dealing with US inflation. Psychology around inflation is weird.
I don't run in Channel circles but LV and Prada are much cheaper in Japan rn. Another handbag hack is to purchase in Hawaii because the retailers charge less there than mainland to address the Japanese tourist market.
Japan is an import-dependent company. Fuel and food are mostly imports, so that hurts everyone.
And export oriented companies are making money. But trickle down economics is a myth, so it's not benefitting the workers. The executives are doing nicely so good for them I suppose.
I'm trying to reverse engineer your thinking. Did you do 150 - 100 = 50, then use 100 as the denominator to get 50%? Because that's not what "losing 50% of value" means.
Went this summer and it was a great deal for a two week vacation. As long as you can get an ok price for plane tickets, it is cheaper to visit Japan than much of the USA (assuming American).
It’s too bad China is still hard to get to by plane (Russian airspace being closed really hurts).
> It’s too bad China is still hard to get to by plane (Russian airspace being closed really hurts).
Assuming you're flying from eastern US, taking the pacific route to bypass RU airspace instead of the polar route doesn't add that much distance to get to coastal China.
I’m coming from Seattle. Before the pandemic, we had two direct flights. Now the cheapest flight to Beijing is through Istanbul, and the next cheapest ticket (with a much more reasonable flight time) is 50% of the cost, and stop in either Japan or Korea to switch planes.
If you are going to southern China you wouldn’t be save so much going over far east Russia anyways, I guess.
Visa situation is a bit easier since they don’t require an invitation letter for Americans anymore. I’m not sure about the biometrics and surveillance now, but it should be limited to a finger print and…China probably has little interest in monitoring you while in the country, they would rather have more tourists than less, as long as you aren’t unlucky enough to be picked for retaliation (or naive enough to snap pictures of navy ships in tourist areas).
It is wrong to think of the Chinese government as a well organized/disciplined machine that can ease drop on citizens and visitors alike. It really is much more chaotic than that: they rely on services to local self censor because they don't have anywhere near enough to do so on their own, nor do they really want to.
When you visit there is lots of chaos, like people parking on sidewalks when they aren't supposed to, or driving the wrong way down a street and no one even batting an eye, or obvious brothels advertising out in the open. Like, if the Chinese government can't even control these simple kinds of things, why do you think they are going to try and control much harder cases?
However, as patio11 said (and surely not the first), the optimal amount of fraud for a payment system is non-zero. Profit is higher when convenience is prioritized over security.
Similarly, it seems the optimal amount of crime for a government is not zero either. Everyone breaking the law allows everyone to be dealt with as needed. Sure I keep a low profile, and they probably have a full profile on us already, but it doesn't feel satisfying helping out.
On the other hand, despite my better judgement I let Japan take photos of me, etc. Who knows what they do with them.
I guess. You'll never feel as free and as restricted as you will in China, both at the same time! Free in the sense that almost anything goes in the party scene (although stay away from drugs, big no-no, even if you are offered some), restricted in the sense that many internet sites don't work and you are always worried that the Chinese authorities will become interested in you for some odd reason (even though this is unlikely, we usually aren't as interesting as we think we are).
Japan in comparison is much more law and order from the start, and mostly the opposite. Japanese Police will search your stuff just to look busy, but they are never going to unnecessarily persecute you.
We flew ZipAir which has amazing prices on lay-flat seats, around $2,000 round trip. Also significant discounts for kids: tickets for my 2 year old and 5 year old were just a few hundred dollars round trip.
Checking prices on google flights, assuming a trip in April from SFO where I live, cheapest option is about $800 round trip to Tokyo, or $1050 to Shenzhen. A bit cheaper but maybe not a significant difference for such a long distance trip.
Same! Just got back and I really miss the cheap everything, and relatively high quality as well. Picked up some Uniqlo things that would have been 2x the price in the US.
I guess the meme is because Uniqlo is cheap as fuck there that one have to be so poor to not be able to afford it. But ironically in my country, it's quite a prestige brand because my currency is even weaker so it's actually quite expensive.
As always with the memes, I agree that it's largely an exaggeration. But I can assure you that it is definitely getting too expensive these days, and I'll think twice before buying from them.
Idk but maybe Uniqlo is uniquely cheap in Japan as Japanese chain? I've bought Uniqlo in Poland, UK, USA and Korea and prices stayed relatively consistent.
Perils of dollar maintaining whatever value it wants to maintain by just whims and fancy and the rest of the world trying to wag their tails and trying to keep up, or not.
Restaurant food is cheap in Japan because there are many high-quality restaurants. The competition drives the price down. Furthermore it may be in the best interest of Japan for their monetary policy to weaken the yen because it induces demand in tourism.
We just got back from Tokyo and the prices for everything were crazy low. Ordered a bunch of sushi at a mall sushi place in Kyoto for what it would cost for Chipotle in DC. It was a huge shock when we flew back through SF and paid $13 each for a taco truck burrito in Millbrae.
The Japanese folks I’ve spoken to are pretty grumbly about the weak yen, though.