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Price Index for Meats, Poultry, Fish & Eggs Rockets to All-Time High
2014 Jun 17, 4:51am 5,150 views 27 comments
by zzyzzx follow (9)
Comments 1 - 27 of 27 Search these comments
smaulgld
2014 Jun 17, 5:24am
What inflation?
Home prices up
Gas up
Food up
Health insurance up
Tuition up
Electricity up
Are your wages up?
Strategist
2014 Jun 17, 6:57am
Relax folks it's not even inflation adjusted. It's supposed to go up.
Are your wages up?
Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha
No....
Yes.
Strategist
2014 Jun 17, 7:04am
What inflation?
Home prices up
Still below 2007.
Gas up
Still below 2008
Food up
Eat more fruits and veggies.
Health insurance up
Can't get everything in life.
Tuition up
Still worth it.
Electricity up
Go solar.
Cell phone prices down
Computer prices down
Television prices down
Meat, Poultry, Fish & Egg Price Index Rockets to All-Time High
Rockets? Where? Looks like a steady climb to me.
In January 1980, when the BLS started tracking the price of this commodity, fresh whole chickens cost $0.70 per pound. By this May 2014, fresh whole chickens cost $1.56 per pound.
Minimum wage was something like 3.00 an hour in 1980 now it's 7.25. Price was 44% of the the current price and wage was 41% of the current minimnum wage. WTF? If anything the ratio of chicken to minimum wage is actually slighty better now. I don't understand the point, if there is one, of this post at all.
Dan8267
2014 Jun 17, 10:16am
Price Index for Meats, Poultry, Fish & Eggs Rockets to All-Time High
What the hell did you expect? This is the natural result of propping up the nominal prices of housing. Everything else has to rise in price to restore housing to the same relative value.
Chicken isn't tracked until 1980 but this thing has been called a "Meat Poultry Fish Eggs" Index since 1967? Was loosey goosey the Other White Meat in 1967?? CPI and this index are both sponsored by BLS, and you are all invited to draw your own conclusions.
Meat, Poultry, Fish & Egg Price Index Rockets to All-Time High
Rockets? Where? Looks like a steady climb to me.
Indeed. Its rather amusing in that whatever point CNS news was trying to make, they undercut it by including a 45year chart which shows a rather steady and unremarkable trend.
The "news" here is that a 539 month trend - something that likely started before many posters here were born - continues unabated in month 540...Amazing!!!
Still, in true patnet form the mere mention of "inflation" and "rocket" gets a handful of posters all jacked up and agitated as if this is somehow new or novel, or even newsworthy in the slightest.
Indeed. Its rather amusing in that whatever point CNS news was trying to make, they undercut it by including a 45year chart which shows a rather steady and unremarkable trend.
Maybe the attempted point could be explain by the fact that CNS news is incorporated under the name Conservative News Service.
Still, in true patnet form the mere mention of "inflation" and "rocket" gets a handful of posters all jacked up and agitated as if this is somehow new or novel, or even newsworthy in the slightest.
It gave zzyzzx a hard on.
they undercut it by including a 45year chart which shows a rather steady and unremarkable trend.
Take a real close look at the spike at the right side of the chart...
Does that look "steady" to you??
Looks like a bunch of other "spikes" over the last 45 years. I'll get my magnifying glass.
Y
2014 Jun 17, 1:26pm
This is damning evidence....
Electricity up
Go solar.
Cell phone prices down
Computer prices down
Television prices down
Y
2014 Jun 17, 1:28pm
We expect you to go to church and repent your repeated blasphemy.
Price Index for Meats, Poultry, Fish & Eggs Rockets to All-Time High
What the hell did you expect?
Take a real close look at the spike at the right side of the chart...
Does that look "steady" to you??
Fair enough, but as bob noted, this last 3-4 month "spike" is not too dissimilar from 7-8-9 other spikes on that 45 year chart, none of which had enough follow through to amount to a trend change or really anything noteworthy.
You know, time was back in the 2008-2009 timeperiod, there truly were some absolutely remarkable once in a lifetime events going on. They were exhilarating, terrifying, even possibly underreported here relative to the severity of what was happening.
Yet now in 2014 we are presented with a news story which is basically akin to "report - sun to rise in the east" and we still get people just as amped up as they were in the 08-09 timeframe. Is this really what we have been reduced to here on patnet?
Vicente
2014 Jun 17, 2:44pm
It gave zzyzzx a hard on.
Such a transient pleasure, a few seconds cut and paste and he's done.
If only he'd think about baseball, he'd have more staying power.
Free Market. Pay the price or don't eat. No food stamps for Republicans.
U.S.A.! U.S.A.! U.S.A.!
Heraclitusstudent
2014 Jun 18, 10:27am
In January 1967, when the BLS started tracking this measure, the index for meats, poultry, fish, and eggs was 38.1. As of last May, it was 234.572. By this January, it hit 240.006. By April, it hit 249.362. And, in May, it climbed to a record 252.832.
38->252 in 47 yrs.
About 4.1% a year - including the 70's.
Have you had your eyes checked recently??
If your eyesight is so great how did you miss all the other spikes? Duh.
Because the article in the OP was about this past May.... Duh.
It doesn't make it true just because they can't read a chart either.
See what it said? All Time High.... Then there was a chart posted that reflects that same data...
Do we need to explain to you what the term "All Time High" means??
Wouldn't an index which has been rising steadily for 45 years, by definition hit an "all time high" pretty much on a regular basis?
What are you arguing?? Is there a point??
Yes. This thread has devolved into two camps: Group A (which includes you) which thinks this is newsworthy or important, and Group B (which includes me and bob) which sees this as merely a continuation of a 45 year trend.
Your points of contention for why this is important alternately are (1) the "spike" and now (2) the "all time high". Thus, I think a fair summation of our discussion is as follows:
THE SPIKE ARGUMENT
You - Look at the most recent spike!
Me/Bob - This is but one of many spikes, how is this important?
THE ALL TIME HIGH ARGUMENT
You - Well this spike led to an All Time High!
Me - Nearly every move over the last 45 years leads to an All Time High, so again, how is this important?
So that's where we are now. The onus is back on you (or your side) to somehow show this CNSNews article as somehow noteworthy or relevant and not (my and bob's contention) merely a minor blip in a 45 year trend - of which "All Time Highs" are a normal and natural occurrence.
CIC, are we done here? I take this to be the case since you have been busy today on patnet posting pictures of Obama, making snarky comments and generally slaying the patnet dragons without responding further to this thread. And that's fine, btw, its part of your persona here and those things do have their place...
Still, if you did not understand my point and want to have an insult free discussion on the merits or lack thereof, I await your response. Cheers.
Not necessarily.
What about this All Time High makes it unique or otherwise noteworthy versus the hundreds of other All Time Highs we have seen in the past 45 years?
What about this spike make it unique or otherwise noteworthy versus several of the other spikes we have seen over the past 45 years?
When I loaded the raw data into Excel and had it plot the trend line, it looks more alarming I think. I believe Excel equalizes the data area above and below the trendline to get a best-fit.
Now I just have to figure out how to add the .png graph. :-)
Edit: Got it.
When I loaded the raw data into Excel and had it plot the trend line, it looks more alarming
I agree. In fact, let me go on the record and say I was wrong, it is noteworthy at least somewhat. Its a shame there wasn't this sort of granularity to the first news chart, it certainly does change the picture.
I'm glad you understand "spike" now...
I always understood it, I just didn't see it (guess I need glasses too).
Either way, lets not mince words here - you were right and I was wrong. I am sufficiently humbled and expect you to rightly celebrate your victory on this issue.
I will not respond further to this thread, so dance on my grave here to your hearts content - I am hereby vanquished.
Another thing I think is interesting about the data is that you would get a much less steep trend line if you just looked from 1967 to around 1972 (admittedly too short a period to draw serious conclusions...), but from then on the shown trend line seems to be a good fit. Did something happen in 1972? We seem to have more volatility after that. Maybe more food items added to the commodities markets or something? Was this caused by speculation?
http://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/ali-meyer/price-index-meats-poultry-fish-eggs-rockets-all-time-high
Meat, Poultry, Fish & Egg Price Index Rockets to All-Time High
(CNSNews.com) – The seasonally-adjusted price index for meats, poultry, fish, and eggs hit an all-time high in May, according to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS).
In January 1967, when the BLS started tracking this measure, the index for meats, poultry, fish, and eggs was 38.1. As of last May, it was 234.572. By this January, it hit 240.006. By April, it hit 249.362. And, in May, it climbed to a record 252.832.
"The index for meats, poultry, fish and eggs has risen 7.7 percent over the span [last year],†says the BLS. "The index for food at home increased 0.7 percent, its largest increase since July 2011. Five of the six major grocery store food group indexes increased in May. The index for meats, poultry, fish, and eggs rose 1.4 percent in May after a 1.5 increase in April, with virtually all its major components increasing,†BLS states.
In addition to this food index, the price for fresh whole chickens hit its all-time high in the United States in May.
In January 1980, when the BLS started tracking the price of this commodity, fresh whole chickens cost $0.70 per pound. By this May 2014, fresh whole chickens cost $1.56 per pound.
A decade ago, in May 2004, a pound of fresh chicken cost $1.04. Since then, the price has gone up 50%.
Each month, the BLS employs data collectors to visit thousands of retail stores all over the United States to obtain information on the prices of thousands of items to measure changes for the Consumer Price Index (CPI).
The CPI is simply the average change over time in prices paid by consumers for a market basket of goods and services.
The BLS found that there was a 0.7% change in the prices for the food at home index in May, which tracks foods like meats, poultry, fish, eggs and dairy, as well as many others.