Low Inflation Again | General financial discussion | Discussion forum

.
I'm guessing it will be like this, for the rest of the year.

Basically, 'Zero' inflation.

Dean

Complainers should perhaps read https://www.statcan.gc.ca/eng/subjects-start/prices_and_price_indexes/consumer_price_indexes to see that StatsCan does make adjustments as best they can based on changes in consumption patterns. It would be pure coincidental that our personal experience in inflation would match that of StatsCan's regional data... since few of us are the 'average' Canadian in a particular region.

First of all AltaRed, thank you for contributing something useful. I am not aware they have temporarily change the way CPI is calculated.

Second of all, the very beginning of your respond just prove my point, you are just someone that is crass. Other members can judge it for themselves.

Third of all, I certainly aware that we all consume different basket of goods compare with the CPI calculation. I have talk about this before in this forum a long while back in a conversation with Loonie.

Forth of all, you completely miss my point. What I try to say is Statistic Canada should use credit and debit card info of Canadian (big data) to frequently adjust (on monthly basis ?) the basket of CPI so it can be more trustworthy.

I have a feeling most people complain about the accuracy of CPI is because human cannot intuitively conceptualize an exponential function (God somehow don't add that into our brain), where the property of said function is that it grow extremely rapidly. In the case of CPI, last month/year of growth become current year/ current month's base when calculating CPI, as a result, the dollar amount of goods actually grow faster despite the percentage of growth is the same.

I think monthly model adjustments would be too unstable due to lots of temporary things like weather events, etc. I'd much sooner see a quarterly (3 month) moving average to smooth out the rough edges, and I don't actually even mind a 12 month rolling average in most cases (this year of covid-19 perhaps being an exception).

I am a strong believer that doing things at a fractional micro level just results in a lot of noise and causes one to lose sight of the forest for the trees. I'd hate for business or policy decisions to be prematurely based on such preciseness.

Added: I believe use of monthly credit and debit card data would be an example of looking at the wrong data. It would be much better, for example, to look at supply/demand data at the wholesale/retail level. I think it would be more accurate to look at grocery store product sales each month to see where people are spending their money. Same with restaurant receipts by restaurant chain type, e.g. Keg's steak house vs fast food. That is the level at which I believe data becomes useful on a practical basis.

Food is a major component of the CPI index, as it should be. So it is accounted for on an average Canadian basis.

Food cost is a big deal for a family with hungry teens and thus they likely proportionately spend more on food than the CPI basket, but for seniors who have lighter and lighter appetites for every year they age, and the family has long been punted from the nest, I find it difficult to complain legitimately about our food costs.

As Bill suggests, we have it pretty good compared to most countries. Now if our loonie collapses, that will change matters considerably, especially outside our growing season.

On behalf of those of us who DO care about certain gov't benefits, it sounds like we shouldn't expect a rise in OAS in October. Correct?