Top all-time · #1833
Timothy B. Lee
Personal blog · fullstackeconomics.comeconomicspoliticsbusiness
Timothy B. Lee writes Full Stack Economics, a personal blog at fullstackeconomics.com about economics, politics and business. Since 2021, 40 different Hacker News readers have linked it 84 times, most often “No, the real inflation rate isn’t 15 percent”. The last post was in 2023, but the archive is still widely read.
Rarely recommended · 5 of 34 sampled comments recommend it?
Why HN links it
HN readers link Timothy B. Lee's Full Stack Economics for debunking ShadowStats inflation claims, housing supply and bubble arguments, and economic history such as why cars were unaffordable.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 34 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
A newsletter about technology, economics, and policy. Click to read Full Stack Economics, by Timothy B. Lee,
Most-linked posts?
- No, the real inflation rate isn’t 15 percent6 people · 7 mentions · first linked 2021-11-17
- ‘Housing in ‘07 wasn’t a bubble” is a true statement that almost no one believes5 people · 7 mentions · first linked 2021-11-05
- Luxury apartment buildings help low-income renters3 people · 5 mentions · first linked 2021-09-13
- /p/no-the-real-inflation-rate-isnt-14-percent3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2023-10-16
- Sorry, deficit hawks: low interest rates are here to stay2 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2021-12-15
- Five Reasons the Sanctions Are Working2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2022-03-03
- Charts that explain the American economy2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2022-01-24
- California plans to turn the screws on NIMBY cities2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2021-09-24
- The end of Silicon Valley’s 20-year boom2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2022-11-16
- “I drove for Lyft for a week and learned its business model is broken”2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2022-12-22
What Hacker News says?
So, bubbles are hard, especially when the underlying fundamental thing does not respond well to price increases (NIMBYism, zoning, weaponized environmental legislation, etc.) https://www.fullstackeconomics.com/p/the-2000s-housing-bubbl... Tech bubbles are doubly so, because now that "total addressable market" has exploded thanks to the internet everything is a bubble. (Starting with the good old dot-com one, and cry…
Comment linking /p/the-2000s-housing-bubble-was-greatly-exaggerated
on “Calling All Hackers”Submitted How Zillow's homebuying scheme lost $881M as a story · 522 points
HN discussionIt's not giving money to banks. Central banks manage the money supply. This of course can help banks make more loans, but banks make loans even if the money supply is tight. https://fullstackeconomics.com/easy-money-is-probably-good-f... https://fullstackeconomics.com/the-2000s-housing-bubble-was-...
Comment linking /the-2000s-housing-bubble-was-greatly-exaggerated/
on “Why the past 10 years of American life have been uniquely stupid”Submitted Agatha Christie could afford a maid and a nanny but not a car as a story · 491 points
HN discussionThe near flat graph of housing costs since 1993 [1] seems really suspect. It's from the BLS so maybe housing costs have been much more stable in the USA, because in the UK they have soared since the early 90's - so much so that Millennials are often called "Generation Rent" due to the declining rate of home ownership. [1] https://fullstackeconomics.com/content/images/size/w1600/202...
Comment linking /content/images/size/w1600/2022/01/07Inflation-1.png
on “Agatha Christie could afford a maid and a nanny but not a car”Submitted Why America can’t build quickly anymore as a story · 478 points
HN discussionhttps://fullstackeconomics.com/the-2000s-housing-bubble-was-...
Comment linking /the-2000s-housing-bubble-was-greatly-exaggerated/
on “How This Ends”Submitted Amazon still isn't doing enough to stop bait-and-switch reviews as a story · 429 points
HN discussionone interesting argument: https://fullstackeconomics.com/sorry-deficit-hawks/ (though central banks can dictate rates anyway)
Comment linking /sorry-deficit-hawks/
on “How This Ends”Submitted Copyright doesn't need 95 years to get the job done as a story · 418 points
HN discussionthere's an argument that prices are higher than they would be because of the spillover from the East coast ( https://fullstackeconomics.com/the-2000s-housing-bubble-was-... )
Comment linking /the-2000s-housing-bubble-was-greatly-exaggerated/
on “Alright, amigo, let's build some affordable housing”Submitted Policy punishes disabled people who save more than $2k as a story · 398 points
HN discussionA take down of Shadowstats from 2011 : * https://www.pragcap.com/why-is-there-deflation-in-hyperinfla... And then again in 2017: * https://www.pragcap.com/theres-still-deflation-hyperinflatio... And November 2021: * https://fullstackeconomics.com/no-the-real-inflation-rate-is... Seriously, these guys are garbage. If you want to verify the official numbers yourself MIT has some code: * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M…
Comment linking /no-the-real-inflation-rate-isnt-14-percent/
on “Inflation rises to 6.8% year over year”Submitted California plans to turn the screws on NIMBY cities as a story · 201 points
HN discussion> ShadowStats Just no: > Responding to prior criticisms made by economist James Hamilton, John Williams explained in a private phone call that Shadowstats does not actually recalculate BLS data, rather, the Shadowstats CPI merely adds a constant to the officially reported numbers.[28] * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shadowstats.com#Negative SHADOWSTATS(t) = 1.9 + 0.0055*t + CPIAUCNS(t) * https://old.reddit.com/r/bad…
Comment linking /p/no-the-real-inflation-rate-isnt-14-percent
on “US Wholesale Inflation Rises by Most in 3 Years”Submitted Why battery costs have plunged since 2010 as a story · 173 points
HN discussionShadow stats is a crank blog with absolutely no validity. Choose your debunking source, but the owner of the blog literally just adds an amount to the official rate that he thinks represents the government error. There’s no calculation, there’s no “pre-1980 methodology”, just one dude’s vibes. If the rate has averaged 9% over the past 25 years, you’d be talking about over 750% inflation since 2000. You can buy any m…
Comment linking /p/no-the-real-inflation-rate-isnt-14-percent
on “US Wholesale Inflation Rises by Most in 3 Years”Submitted Collectibles are terrible investments as a story · 158 points
HN discussionA word of caution about shadowstats: they have been making basic, verifiable conceptual errors about the mathematics of inflation indexes for years. Details here: https://fullstackeconomics.com/no-the-real-inflation-rate-is...
Comment linking /no-the-real-inflation-rate-isnt-14-percent/
on “U.S. annual inflation rate drops to 8.5%”Submitted Why the government took home prices out of its main inflation index as a story · 143 points
HN discussionPerhaps if we weren't subjecting the tens of millions of Americans in the $15,000 - $40,000 income range to effective marginal tax rates of up to 103% [0], we would see more labor force participation. Between income tax and benefit phaseout, it can literally cost money to get a raise in our system today [1]. [0] https://fullstackeconomics.com/103-percent-the-hidden-tax-ra... [1] https://www.heritage.org/taxes/report…
Comment linking /103-percent-the-hidden-tax-rates-of-means-testing/
on “The US “labor shortage” is just a wage shortage (2021)”Submitted Why the 2020 census has 9 fake people in a single house as a story · 92 points
HN discussionFor those who don't know about shadow stats, here's a good explanation of the issues with it, and why their numbers are off https://fullstackeconomics.com/no-the-real-inflation-rate-is... > Based on my conversations with Williams, I think I now understand what he’s doing: he’s misinterpreting a cumulative 20-year change in the measured price level as a change in the measured annual inflation rate. And that caused hi…
Comment linking /no-the-real-inflation-rate-isnt-14-percent/
on “The tech bubble that never burst”Submitted ‘Housing in ‘07 wasn’t a bubble” is a true statement that almost no one believes as a story · 79 points
HN discussionThe spectrum between yaay everything is amazing and the dollar system collapses is ... pretty big. "U.S. interest costs won’t rise catastrophically in the short term, and there’s not really a reason to expect interest rates to stay high for decades. Furthermore, inflation will itself erode some of the national debt, reducing long-term interest costs relative to GDP." "Right now, interest payments haven’t even begun…
Comment linking /i/70962695/aging-populations-save-more
on “Why are sex workers forced to wear a financial scarlet letter?”Submitted No, the real inflation rate isn’t 15 percent as a story · 46 points
HN discussionI don’t know if you’re thinking of it but there’s this site called shadowstats which claims to calculate CPI/inflation with the old method and shows totally wild inflation numbers but the way it actually works is that the guy who runs the site takes regular CPI and adds in adjustments to his liking to get inflation numbers that he thinks look right. My understanding is that you get pretty similar numbers with either…
Comment linking /no-the-real-inflation-rate-isnt-14-percent/
on “Gen Z have 86% less purchasing power compared to baby boomers in their twenties”Submitted We’re mostly living better than our parents as a story · 38 points
HN discussionSee https://fullstackeconomics.com/how-luxury-apartment-building... for the empirical research refuting that point and agreeing with the basic supply-demand issue. The issue in Toronto is not just the anecdotal "new condo buildings" but how much housing Toronto has built per capita for the last several decades, which is almost certainly "too little." See the link in my original post to data from Tokyo, which is one…
Comment linking /how-luxury-apartment-buildings-help-low-income-renters/
on “Breakdown of data on homeless populations across the U.S.”Submitted Charts that explain the American economy as a story · 7 points
HN discussion
