The cost of everyday things.
Fatso has offered a deal to voters: vote Republican in both houses this November he will personally approve a check to each household not done since Covid: $5000. There is a price to freedom then. Epictetus, a slave and a teacher of stoicism also gained his freedom in 68 A.D. I used to follow on Bloomberg the three payments made during Covid, they totaled up to 3200 per adult and 2500 per child. The people on Bloomberg were able to track how these payments: GAO estimates around $931 billion were paid out including enhanced unemployment benefits. The anchors would discuss how much of those $3200 dollars were still showing up in increased spending patterns month after month. For some reason, the increase in spending lasted for a very long time (almost a year). Logically it made no sense to me. For Americans and our cost of living 3200 is not a lot of money. It may cover about 3-4 months of rent for example.
Anyways, since China has never truly experienced inflation I thought it would be instructive to see how much USD $5000 would buy in China.
$5,000 USD is approximately 35,000–36,000 CNY
Groceries: basic items — loaf of bread ~6–12 CNY, a dozen eggs ~10–20 CNY, 1 kg apples ~8–15 CNY. 35 CNY buys several basic grocery items.
Meanwhile, as I had mentioned, oil has started to rise rapidly in the markets.
If a person think the Hormuz choke is only about oil, then the oil price jumped up in March, left a “discontinuity” or a “gorge” then travelled back down walk through the chasm and is now going back up again.
However beautiful it looks on a diagram, it is unlikely the true explanation: oil is not actually traded in futures, it is traded in markets where oil is produced. The prices there are very different than the prices seen here. These futures markets provide a quick view of what may be happening to oil, and they’re useful for “hedging” by knowledgeable parties, but they’re not an accurate projection of the real prices of the different types of oil.
The price of diesel however, is what the driver pays at the gas or petrol stations. The current average retail price of diesel in the United States is $5.98 per gallon, while in China it is approximately $4.39 per gallon (7.75 CNY per liter).
The average American household has paid an additional $770.81 in cumulative fuel costs since the start of the Iran War. [1]
This does not include the transmission of inflation because of higher fuel prices. This is simply the extra costs that have been paid by the average American household for driving.
Ultimately, if fatso’s promise of $5000 dollars eventually comes about, if Republicans win both houses, and they decide to award the prize to the average citizenry, it will help Americans — if they lived in China. However, they don’t live in China, they live in America.
