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Good eye. The ticker was using the observed rate of change over the two most recent data points, so it's actually biased towards the most recent inflation numbers. I've updated it to simply use the slope between the oldest (January 2000) and the most recent data.

It won't be 100% accurate, but it's close enough to create a visual. And the number is always updated monthly with real data anyways.


Nice job, thoughtful execution


I think you're confusing "created a visualization because I thought it would be interesting" with "just learned about inflation." :)


Yeah, same here. Perhaps the Big Mac Index [0] is what you want.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Mac_Index


Hey all. This was merely intended as a fun visualization of inflation over long periods of time, in a format that’s slightly easier to grok for most people.

That’s it. There’s no further intention behind this, I just thought a real time “decay” visualization would be neat.

Literally everything about how this works is in the source in maybe 30 lines of js. It’s not complicated. Data is from BLS (whether or not that's accurate is another conversation entirely). I auto update the data monthly via a chron job, right around the time new data is published.

I’m not really changing this from where it’s at. It’s done as is. There are other sources out there already if you want to customize the date range or see a graph.

Thanks for checking it out :).


This reads like a Douglas Adams quote


This literally made me lol. Not sure if it’s true. I might be true. But come on!


Lol


This reply cannot be understated. Those who are strong advocates for highly leveraged equity positions who use real estate to justify either have yet to experience a true market decline, or are simply really green to investing.

If I could leverage 4:1 on the total market index using a fixed 30 year loan without the ability to force a sale I would in a heartbeat. Unfortunately, that’s just not how it works.

And anything claiming to be the solution to that (like a leveraged ETF such as UPRO), suffers from volatility decay that causes it to underperform or eventually go to zero in horizontal markets (e.g. lost decades).


I refuse to pay for this. I’m willing to wager it will be free within a reasonable amount of time.


Relevant XKCD: https://xkcd.com/605/


Now do TVs


I picked up a car from a mechanic the other day and we got to riffing about my own Tesla. He admitted to having friends that worked at Tesla on the manufacturing line. In his own words, these guys are “complete idiots,” and “do shrooms before assembling cars.”

I want to take his words with a grain of salt, but…I kinda believe it. Obviously hearsay means nothing, though.


I mean I don’t doubt that the some people working the assembly lines are getting a little messed-up before their shifts.

Our classic mini from Australia has other production anomalies, you kinda just chock it up to the workers being a little drunk during its construction.


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