This is incredible. They are touting the automatic COLA increases, which have been around since 1975 from a law passed by Congress, as a Biden achievement! Biden had nothing to do with it, nor does he dole out anything, all it means is that inflation was the highest in 40 yrs 😂
▪️Annual COLAs are tied to the CPI-W index (urban wage & clerical workers) which is slightly different from the CPI-U (urban consumers), the headline number most people refer to. Increasing SS payments means that SS will just become insolvent quicker, it’s not a good thing!
https://www.ssa.gov/cola/
▪️On a related note, the CPI data for Sept came out yesterday and was again higher than expected. The CPI-U rose 0.4% in Sept, +8.2% year over year (YoY) which was a slight decline from last month, but there are lots of troubling signs that inflation will remain high.
▪️The last 2 months have been cooled mostly by steep declines in energy prices, and also used cars. But it’s doubtful energy will continue falling in the coming months, meanwhile price inflation in the broader economy has taken root.
▪️In the beginning of the inflation crisis, the shelter component helped tamp down the inflation numbers. Shelter is almost 1/3 of the CPI and was growing at ~2-5% for most of the past year, which helped the headline number stay at “just” 7-9%. But shelter is now rising.
▪️In Sept, shelter rose 0.7% and 6.6% YoY, the highest in 40 yrs. This also propelled the core index (excluding food & energy) to a 40 yr high. Shelter is a much stickier index and won’t likely come down quickly, meaning elevated CPI readings will probably continue.
▪️Food also remains high, +0.8% in Sept (11.2% YoY). Food away from home rose the most in 41 years! If energy increases again in the coming months we could see CPI actually go up and reach new highs, something few are expecting but would have giant repercussions.
https://www.bls.gov/news.release/cpi.nr0.htm
So many of these right wing accounts are just whiners now, this is a diatribe about automatic sinks and towels, the horror! As I explained in a prior post, most of the newer terminals have great bathrooms, some now have completely private stalls and plenty of them. The worst and most crowded airport bathrooms are invariably found in aging terminals that are decades old. It’s a reminder that airports were usually drab and uncomfortable.
I think the heyday of the air hand-dryers was like 15-20 years ago, where often you couldn’t find real towels. Now you can at least usually get real paper towels in airport bathrooms. Remember those old cloth roller towels that would go in a loop and somehow “clean” themselves? Yuck! Public bathrooms have always been gross, it seems some are deliberately having selective memories.
Airport food and drinks were always expensive, but now practically everyone brings those huge cooler flasks with them and fills them up. So not sure what he means that ...
I first critiqued this terrible take by looking at how food has actually improved substantially. Even though I said the same could be done in every category, people said “you’re only doing food.” So let’s do air travel and see why it’s not gotten better, not worse.
▪️Aircraft have greatly improved. Just 15-20 years ago, many domestic routes (~15%) were flown by turboprops like the Brasilia, Dash 8 or Saab. Now, almost everything is in jets, and most aircraft have WiFi. Some even have Starlink, where you probably have faster WiFi than your home. Most major airlines offer dozens or hundreds of movies and shows to watch.
▪️Newer designs like the 787 have lower cabin altitudes and improved humidity, which make a huge difference in passenger comfort on long haul flights. The first/business class international market has gotten very competitive globally, with many carriers offering excellent service and amenities. Pods, suites, showers, etc. Coach still sucks but is dramatically cheaper ...
This is the complete opposite of an empirical fact. The right has now joined the left in being pessimistic about the modern world and completely unappreciative of the amazing abundance we now have. I’ll just focus on food here, but you could do it for almost every category.
▪️Fresh produce used to be available only in season. In the winter it was canned or frozen. People used to send fruit for Christmas gifts, it was that much of a luxury good. Now, you can get giant, sweet berries year around in every grocery store. Corn on the cob in February. Not to mention once rare items like dragon fruit, heirloom tomatoes or baby bok choy.
▪️If you didn’t live on the coast, seafood was either not available, frozen, or extremely expensive. If you lived in the Midwest and traveled to coastal locales you would quite literally be able to eat food you had never seen. Salmon has become much more abundant and accessible. You can get fresh ahi at Walmart today. Sushi and oyster bars exist everywhere ...
