{"id":34639,"date":"2018-05-31T09:46:32","date_gmt":"2018-05-31T14:46:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=34639"},"modified":"2018-05-31T09:46:32","modified_gmt":"2018-05-31T14:46:32","slug":"burrito-index-update-burrito-cost-triples-official-inflation-up-43-from-2001","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=34639","title":{"rendered":"Burrito Index Update: Burrito Cost Triples, Official Inflation Up 43% from 2001"},"content":{"rendered":"

Burrito Index Update: Burrito Cost Triples, Official Inflation Up 43% from 2001<\/a><\/h3>\n

Welcome to debt-serfdom, the only possible output of the soaring cost of living.<\/i><\/p>\n

Long-time readers may recall the Burrito Index, my real-world measure of inflation.<\/b> The Burrito Index: Consumer Prices Have Soared 160% Since 2001<\/a> (August 1, 2016). The Burrito Index<\/i> tracks the cost of a regular burrito since 2001. Since we keep detailed records of expenses (a necessity if you\u2019re a self-employed free-lance writer), I can track the cost of a regular burrito at our favorite taco truck with great accuracy: the cost of a regular burrito has gone up from $2.50 in 2001 to $5 in 2010 to $6.50 in 2016.<\/p>\n

It’s time for an update: the cost of a regular burrito has now reached $7.50, triple the 2001 cost.<\/b> That’s a 200% increase in 17 years. According to the federal government, inflation since 2001 has risen about 40%: what $1 bought in 2001 now costs $1.43, according to the BLS Inflation calculator<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The Burrito Index is five times the official inflation rate.<\/b> As I noted in The Disaster of Inflation–For the Bottom 95%<\/a> (October 28, 2016) and Inflation Isn’t Evenly Distributed: The Protected Are Fine, the Unprotected Are Impoverished Debt-Serfs<\/a> (May 25, 2017), the gross under-reporting of inflation (i.e. the loss of purchasing power of “money” and labor) is only part of the distortion: some of the populace is protected by subsidies from the real ravages of inflation, while those exposed to the unsubsidized real-world costs are being savaged by supposedly benign inflation.<\/p>\n

Lest you reckon only burritos have tripled in cost since 2001–have you checked out college tuition or rents lately?<\/b> Consider a typical public university:<\/p>\n

University of California at Davis:
\n2004 in-state tuition $5,684
\n2018 in state tuition $14,463 <\/i><\/p>\n

So tuition at a state university soared 2.5 times while official inflation rose by a mere 35% since 2004. If UCD tuition had only risen by 35%, it would total $7,673, not $14,463. The cost above and beyond what we would expect had tuition tracked official inflation adds up to $27,000 per four-year bachelor\u2019s degree per student.<\/p>\n

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Burrito Index Update: Burrito Cost Triples, Official Inflation Up 43% from 2001 Welcome to debt-serfdom, the only possible output of the soaring cost of living. Long-time readers may recall the Burrito Index, my real-world measure of inflation. The Burrito Index: Consumer Prices Have Soared 160% Since 2001 (August 1, 2016). The Burrito Index tracks the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[127,1055,426,587],"class_list":["post-34639","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics","tag-charles-hugh-smith","tag-consumer-price-index","tag-inflation","tag-of-two-minds"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34639","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=34639"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34639\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":34640,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34639\/revisions\/34640"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=34639"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=34639"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=34639"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}