[Thymeclock]

Originally Posted by jamesqf

But you're changing the rules, now. We never said there was NO inflation, just that it's not anywhere near the food prices going up 100-200% a year range.

Some items have increased that much in a short time frame. When a price increase does come it can be large if viewed as a ratio. (Most people don't think in ratios, so they don't notice the percentage increase.)

But that increase of price of gas has almost NOTHING to do with inflation (yes, there's been an underlying 2-3% inflation for years), and everything to do with increasing demand on a limited supply. If it was inflation, we would have seen the prices of everything go up by similar percentages, and they haven't.

You see inflation as an all encompassing event, which we can agree it is, over time. But as with statistics, the inflation index can be manipulated. Food and fuel are not in the index anymore. That's convenient if the powers that be want to portray the inflation rate as being less than it actually is. (Besides, it's impossible to live without food or fuel.)

They had alternatives. They could have found jobs closer to home (or homes closer to the job), arranged to telecommute, or simply have chosen to buy cars with good fuel economy rather than the oversized gas-guzzlers that so many of them did. Then they'd be sitting pretty, too. But they chose to ignore all the warnings that gas prices would keep going up and up, and cling to their "Gawd gave us the right to cheap gas!" fantasies.

No disagreement there. But actually they were expecting not so much a "right to cheap gas" but a less volatile economy where prices would be more stable and predictable. Market economies tend to boom and bust, and that has certain consequences, some of which may be undesirable. In the case of the price of gasoline, the stability itself provides and ensures mobility. As mobility and economic activity decrease, so does the economy decline. (Some actually favor this, but as the saying goes "be careful of what you wish for, as you may get it.")

There was a story in the New York Times a few days ago, about how after the last mega-tsunami (a few centuries ago) the Shoguns set up marker stones at the high-water mark, warning people not to build closer to the shore. And of course people ignored them, or treated them as quaint historical relics with no relevance to the modern world...

I don't know whether they're nutso or not, but they sure were stupid.

You need not look to exotic places or ancient history to witness it. Every few years in low lying areas (New Jersey is notorious for this) homes become flooded and the residents can be seen on the local news whining and moaning about it. Yet they choose to stay there.