Speaker 1: Shrinkflation. Have you heard of it? Apparently it's such a
Speaker 1: big deal that we have the President of the United States,
Speaker 1: President Biden, going on national TV right before the Super
Speaker 1: Bowl to talk to the American people directly about shrinkflation. Now,
Speaker 1: shrinkflation is like a play on words of something called inflation.
Speaker 1: We have another word called stagflation. And when you add
Speaker 1: all of these things up, it's bad. But the government
Speaker 1: doesn't want you to believe that, and that is why
Speaker 1: they are going on a massive gas lighting campaign, from
Speaker 1: Biden on TV to Janet Yellen on CBS and so
Speaker 1: much more. So. In today's episode, we're going to talk
Speaker 1: about what is going on. Why is the Biden administration
Speaker 1: going on a full court press gas lighting us about
Speaker 1: the truth. We're going to dig through some economic data
Speaker 1: so you can see how price levels have changed throughout history.
Speaker 1: We're going to take a look at what Janet Yellen said,
Speaker 1: and we're going to break this down step by step.
Speaker 1: We're going to put actual data behind it to see
Speaker 1: where we're really at. We're going to pull back the
Speaker 1: of some things that she said so you can understand
Speaker 1: what she's really really saying. We're going to talk about
Speaker 1: the actual data of our Americans better off or not,
Speaker 1: what you could be doing about this to protect yourself
Speaker 1: and so much more so, let's just go ahead and
Speaker 1: dive in. If you're just tuning in, you're listening to
Speaker 1: the Mark Mos Show. We're talking about the way the
Speaker 1: world changes as we look at it through the lens
Speaker 1: of politics, finance, and technology. Today we're mostly talking about
Speaker 1: finance and how the world is changing. But unfortunately it's
Speaker 1: become political now. I say unfortunately because what the Paul Krugman's,
Speaker 1: the economists of the government have to say, and what
Speaker 1: many economists of the central bankers have to say, is
Speaker 1: that we can only trust the money that's given to
Speaker 1: us by a government, and we can only trust money
Speaker 1: that's given us to us by a central bank. However,
Speaker 1: that makes it political then because the government and then
Speaker 1: which government, and which ruling party and all these things. Right,
Speaker 1: Money is neutral, Money should not be political. Money is
Speaker 1: just money. Money is medium of exchange. Now, I didn't
Speaker 1: want to go down this path, but just real quickly,
Speaker 1: if you think about money, as my friend Robert B.
Speaker 1: Breedlove says, will be the defining question of our generation.
Speaker 1: But what is money? And money is a lot of things,
Speaker 1: but ultimately, it stores my value, it stores my energy,
Speaker 1: it stores my wealth until I'm ready to exchange it
Speaker 1: for goods and services that I want, and so then
Speaker 1: it becomes a medium of exchange. So I can use
Speaker 1: it as a store of value, and then I can
Speaker 1: use it as a medium of exchange. And so neither
Speaker 1: of those things should be political. The only reason it's
Speaker 1: political is because they want to impact. They want to affect,
Speaker 1: they want to change the amount of money so that
Speaker 1: then they can drive certain political ideologies and things like that.
Speaker 1: So let's break this down a little bit. So let's
Speaker 1: talk about for a second. First, let's talk about let's
Speaker 1: just start right at the top, and let's play this
Speaker 1: little clip of a video of Biden the Super Bowl Sunday.
Speaker 2: Is there anything like me you'd like to be surrounded
Speaker 2: by a snack or two while watching the big game?
Speaker 2: You know, when buying snacks for the game, you might
Speaker 2: have noticed one thing. Sports drinks bottles are smaller. A
Speaker 2: bag of chips is few of chips. They're still charging
Speaker 2: it chest as much. And as an ice cream lover,
Speaker 2: what makes me the most angry is the ice cream
Speaker 2: carts have actually shrunk inside, not on price. I've had
Speaker 2: enough of what they call shrinkflation.
Speaker 1: So he is mad because he doesn't get as much
Speaker 1: ice cream. The memes of Biden are just legendary of him,
Speaker 1: like licking his ice cream cone as the world is
Speaker 1: burning down around him. But he's mad because the amount
Speaker 1: of ice cream that he gets in his cart isn't
Speaker 1: as much as it used to be, and he calls
Speaker 1: it shrinkflation. So inflation is well, we're going to break
Speaker 1: down what inflation really is, but per the sort of
Speaker 1: used term today, which they've changed so they can defeat
Speaker 1: this argument. We'll come back to that. But inflation being
Speaker 1: price is going up, and when prices are going up,
Speaker 1: your money doesn't buy you as much goods and services.
Speaker 1: Back to money being in medi of exchange. Now, what
Speaker 1: he's called shrinkflation is that the price didn't actually go up,
Speaker 1: but the amount of goods and services went down. It's
Speaker 1: the same thing. So instead of prices going up, the
Speaker 1: price to day the same, except you just get less stuff.
Speaker 1: It's the same thing. He's calling something different but he's
Speaker 1: complaining about is ice cream. But the reality is here,
Speaker 1: what he's really trying to do is divide the people.
Speaker 1: What he's really trying to do is angle for more
Speaker 1: government oversight, and he's trying to blame the greedy capitalist
Speaker 1: for doing this. He's angry about it. He wants to
Speaker 1: do something about it. He wants to get to the
Speaker 1: bottom of why these companies are giving you less chips
Speaker 1: in your bag or less ice cream in your cart.
Speaker 1: And as he talks about, but that is completely false.
Speaker 1: And I'm just going to break this down for a minute.
Speaker 1: We're going to come back to this towards the end,
Speaker 1: but let's just think about this for a minute. If,
Speaker 1: as he says ice cream, if ice cream maker number
Speaker 1: one charges five dollars for one court of ice cream,
Speaker 1: and ice cream Maker two sells the same court of
Speaker 1: ice cream for six dollars, I, as a consumer, get
Speaker 1: to choose which one I want. Now. Likewise, let's say
Speaker 1: they're both dollars, but one is a court and one
Speaker 1: is a quarter of a court or half of a court,
Speaker 1: then I can still make my choice. What he's saying, though,
Speaker 1: is that people are tricking us and they're selling us
Speaker 1: less one. I would say that he thinks too low
Speaker 1: of the American people, Like, come on, are we really
Speaker 1: that ignorant. Do we really not notice that there's less
Speaker 1: actual food in there to feed our families or feed ourselves.
Speaker 1: Of course we don't. But the reality is what I
Speaker 1: want to point to is it's not about a greedy business.
Speaker 1: It's about the necessity of these businesses in order to
Speaker 1: stay profitable. You see, a business has to make profit
Speaker 1: if they want to pay for their products, if they
Speaker 1: want to pay their employees and so forth. And the
Speaker 1: all of this rhetoric that you hear from the government
Speaker 1: talking about these greedy corporations overcharge and hear from Elizabeth
Speaker 1: Warren as well. We heard it from well, I think
Speaker 1: it was Elizabeth Warren. She last year Thanksgiving talking about
Speaker 1: these greedy turkey companies overcharging you, gouging you on turkeys.
Speaker 1: But the way the free market works doesn't allow for
Speaker 1: that to happen. You see, if I see somebody make
Speaker 1: two hundred percent profit margins on turkey or oil or
Speaker 1: ice cream, then I'm going to go, Man, there's a
Speaker 1: lot of money there. I'm gonna go make turkey or
Speaker 1: produce oil or sell ice cream. And instead of making
Speaker 1: two hundred percent, I'll make one hundred percent. And then
Speaker 1: someone else sees that and goes, well, I'll do that,
Speaker 1: but I'll make fifty percent, and someone else sys, well,
Speaker 1: i'll do that, but i'll make thirty percent, and then
Speaker 1: someone else does twenty percent. And you can see through competition,
Speaker 1: it eats into those profit margins until profit margins getting
Speaker 1: shrunk so little that nobody's making money. Then a few
Speaker 1: businesses go out of business, and somewhere the price stabilizes
Speaker 1: at just the right blend of profitability for the business
Speaker 1: to day in business and affordability for the customer to use.
Speaker 1: It's competition that eats into that. You see. It's impossible
Speaker 1: for a business to continue to over gouge without competition
Speaker 1: coming into get into that unless the government enables that.
Speaker 1: You see, it's the government that enables the monopolies to happen,
Speaker 1: and that's what prevents it. Now, in the case of food,
Speaker 1: that's not the case. In the case of food shrink inflation,
Speaker 1: it's because of inflation, and it's because the cost of
Speaker 1: their commodities have gone up so much they've had to
Speaker 1: lower the amount of goods and services that you receive.
Speaker 1: I have a friend who has a restaurant, and he
Speaker 1: said that he's not able to sell steaks anymore. As
Speaker 1: a matter of fact, he's having to change his whole
Speaker 1: menu because he can barely stay in business anymore, and
Speaker 1: he has to start serving lower quality food. He said,
Speaker 1: I can only raise my prices so much, and I
Speaker 1: can't raise my prices because customers will stop coming in.
Speaker 1: I can't raise my prices high enough to offset the
Speaker 1: cost my input costs that have gone up. And so
Speaker 1: my only option is to start serving lesser quality food
Speaker 1: that I have higher profit margins on. So it's another
Speaker 1: way that you can do it. You can serve a
Speaker 1: lower quality food. My friend safety and who wrote the
Speaker 1: Bitcoin standard, talks about Fiat money, Fiat food. A big
Speaker 1: reason why our food has gotten so bad is because
Speaker 1: of inflation forcing manufacturers to try to make food cheaper, cheaper, cheaper,
Speaker 1: substituting for lesser quality of ingredients. Now, let's put this
Speaker 1: into some practical terms that you can understand. So Biden
Speaker 1: did this right at the Super Bowl. So right when
Speaker 1: everyone's thinking about buying snacks for the Super Bowl party,
Speaker 1: they're seeing the sticker shock at the pump or at
Speaker 1: the snack food check out. I guess in this case,
Speaker 1: and he did it specifically when you had the largest
Speaker 1: audience in the world but certainly in America at that time,
Speaker 1: watching the Super Bowl, and he used it specifically to
Speaker 1: go after businesses to divide. He's supposed to be the
Speaker 1: one that brought us all back together, but he constantly
Speaker 1: attacks the MAGA, the right, and then this case the
Speaker 1: business is But again I've explained that why that's false.
Speaker 1: But let's talk about some actual numbers in regard to
Speaker 1: the Super Bowl. So in the first super Bowl, super
Speaker 1: Bowl one, which was nineteen sixty seven, a ticket cost
Speaker 1: ten dollars ten bucks for a super Bowl ticket in
Speaker 1: ninety sixty seven. It took until nineteen seventy five, so
Speaker 1: it took about eight years and prices doubled from ten
Speaker 1: to twenty dollars. Then it took six years to double
Speaker 1: from twenty to forty doll Now we're talking about one
Speaker 1: hundred percent increase here, Okay, we're not talking about a
Speaker 1: five percent or two percent, Like if you're an employee,
Speaker 1: what is your annual increase in your pay two percent,
Speaker 1: three percent? We're talking about one hundred percent increases in
Speaker 1: Super Bowl tickets. If you're just tune in, you're listening
Speaker 1: to the Mark Moss Show. We're talking about shrinkflation and
Speaker 1: how it's eating into your wealth. I'll be right back
Speaker 1: talking more about inflation, shrinkflation and breaking down the real
Speaker 1: root cause on what you can do. Don't go away,
Speaker 1: I'll be right back. All right, Welcome back. If you're
Speaker 1: just tune in, you're listening to the Mark Moss Show.
Speaker 1: We're talking about shrinkflation. We're talking about the government's gas
Speaker 1: lighting us on what shrinkflation is, what the true causes are,
Speaker 1: and just to highlight it, we are going through how
Speaker 1: Biden made an address to the nation right before the
Speaker 1: Super Bowl saying he's fed up with shrinkflation and he
Speaker 1: wants the companies to stop doing it. But we're just
Speaker 1: talking about the real root causes inflation, and we're talking
Speaker 1: about specifically. The Super Bowl tickets are a perfect way
Speaker 1: to see this. The very first Super Bowl tickets were
Speaker 1: ten bucks. It took eight years for the to double
Speaker 1: to twenty bucks. It took six years for them to
Speaker 1: double to forty bucks. Then it took three years to
Speaker 1: go to sixty bucks. Then it took sixteen years to
Speaker 1: double to one hundred and twenty five dollars. That was
Speaker 1: nineteen ninety. Then it took six years to double to
Speaker 1: three hundred and fifty that was nineteen ninety six. Then
Speaker 1: it took twelve years to double to seven hundred. That
Speaker 1: was Super Bowl two thousand and six, seven hundred. Then
Speaker 1: it took another five years to double to fifteen hundred.
Speaker 1: That was in twenty fourteen. And then it only took
Speaker 1: another five years to double to forty three hundred. That
Speaker 1: was Super Bowl twenty nineteen. And then it took one
Speaker 1: year to double from forty three hundred to seventy one hundred.
Speaker 1: That was twenty twenty. And then this year tickets were
Speaker 1: about twenty five thousand dollars. So that's what we call inflation. Now,
Speaker 1: it's not shrink flation shrink inflation. They're basically the same thing.
Speaker 1: It's strengthflation is a way to hide the actual inflation.
Speaker 1: But if there's no better gauge than that, there's also
Speaker 1: like the Big Mac index. I'm not going to read
Speaker 1: that off to you, but like the same Big Mac
Speaker 1: you can see how it costs more and more and more,
Speaker 1: the same gallon of gas, how it costs more and
Speaker 1: more and more, and that is inflation hitting you and
Speaker 1: everybody feels it. But why is the American government going
Speaker 1: out on a full scale campaign to tell us that
Speaker 1: it's not real. Well, part of it is because they
Speaker 1: are facing an election ear and part of it is
Speaker 1: because they're getting ready to do something that's going to
Speaker 1: cause inflation to get even worse. We'll cover that in
Speaker 1: a minute. But what really hit me was actually seeing
Speaker 1: this Biden commercial. Obviously that was a pretty shocking to me,
Speaker 1: and more shocking how everybody seems to fall for that.
Speaker 1: And then at the gym, I said, they have TVs
Speaker 1: on at the gym in the morning. I go there
Speaker 1: before before I come to the studio, and they had
Speaker 1: one on talking about how Americans are feeling it but
Speaker 1: they're not really understanding not as bad as they think
Speaker 1: it is. That was yesterday I saw. And then this
Speaker 1: morning on the gym I saw Janet Yellen was on
Speaker 1: CBS again talking about inflation and how it's not that
Speaker 1: bad and how it's getting better and all these things.
Speaker 1: And so like we have this like full scale media
Speaker 1: blitz going on right now, from Biden addressing the Super
Speaker 1: Bowl to being on mainstream media yesterday to now Janet
Speaker 1: Yellen going on and addressing the nation. When you have
Speaker 1: the president. When you have the Secretary of the US
Speaker 1: Treasury and you have mainstream media running these all consecutively,
Speaker 1: they're trying to get a message out. But what is
Speaker 1: the message? Well, in this exclusive interview, because Janney Ellen
Speaker 1: doesn't do a lot of interviews, and this exclusive interview,
Speaker 1: she tells us what's going on. As matter of fact,
Speaker 1: let's go ahead and play this clip here.
Speaker 3: Do you think the president can win in Michigan in November?
Speaker 4: Well, I certainly hope.
Speaker 3: So.
Speaker 4: I think the economy is going to be good and strong.
Speaker 3: The Michigan economy is critical for Biden's re election campaign.
Speaker 1: So there you have it, right. As I said, money
Speaker 1: should not be political. But yet here she is saying
Speaker 1: it's critical for Biden to win the election. She's sure,
Speaker 1: hope so, And what's critical for Biden to win the
Speaker 1: election is to get the economy under control, get inflation
Speaker 1: under control. And there you can hear it. Now. I
Speaker 1: love it when people say that the FED is independent
Speaker 1: and the Treasury is looking out for the American people,
Speaker 1: But here you can say hear it directly that they
Speaker 1: are working specifically for Biden's re election campaign. Now, when
Speaker 1: you understand that, and you understand that it's a political motivation,
Speaker 1: then it's much easier to understand what it is that
Speaker 1: they might be doing and why they might be doing it. Now,
Speaker 1: you see a lot of people constantly tell me over
Speaker 1: and over and over, you don't understand Mark. The Fed
Speaker 1: can't pivot off their position, the Treasury and the Fed.
Speaker 1: They can't continue to ease the monetary situation because inflation
Speaker 1: will rage. But as you hear it right there, it's
Speaker 1: critical for the reelection campaign. They would much rather have
Speaker 1: inflation than the opposite, which is deflation. Let's go ahead
Speaker 1: and play this next clip so you can hear exactly
Speaker 1: she's saying it. Let's go ahead.
Speaker 4: Americans should feel confident that inflation will come down to
Speaker 4: levels that will no longer really be noticeable or worrisome
Speaker 4: to them.
Speaker 1: So Americans should be confident that it will come down.
Speaker 1: So look, I get it, I get it. I get it.
Speaker 1: You can't afford the same quality of life that you
Speaker 1: had before, and you know you have to eat hamburger
Speaker 1: meat instead of steak now, and you can't drive to
Speaker 1: go see your mom on the weekend because you can't
Speaker 1: afford the gas. I get it, I get it. But
Speaker 1: be confident knowing that it's going to come down. It's
Speaker 1: going to be better. And the best part that she
Speaker 1: said here towards the end, I'm going to play it
Speaker 1: back one more time.
Speaker 4: Americans should feel confident that inflation will come down to
Speaker 4: levels that will no longer really be noticeable or worrisome
Speaker 4: to them.
Speaker 1: So she said it will come back down to levels
Speaker 1: that are no longer noticeable. So what does that mean.
Speaker 1: Let's think about that for a second. So she is
Speaker 1: basically saying that inflation is stealing your wealth, it's eroding
Speaker 1: your purchasing power. People are upset about this, rightfully so,
Speaker 1: and their goal is to get it down to a
Speaker 1: level that you don't really notice it, like the frog
Speaker 1: that's in the boiling pot of water, so to speak.
Speaker 1: You see, the Fed has a target of two percent inflation.
Speaker 1: That's their target. So that means they only want inflation
Speaker 1: to go up by two percent, right, But what that
Speaker 1: means is that they're stealing two percent of my wealth.
Speaker 1: So if I have if I have one hundred thousand
Speaker 1: dollars in the bank, I could buy one hundred thousand
Speaker 1: dollars worth of goods today. But at two percent inflation,
Speaker 1: over five years, I can only buy ninety thousand dollars
Speaker 1: worth of goods and services, even though I still have
Speaker 1: the one hundred thousand in the bank. It only buys
Speaker 1: me ninety thousand worth of goods, so they didn't actually
Speaker 1: steal my money. As in currency units, I still have
Speaker 1: one hundred thousand units of currency. It's the purchasing power
Speaker 1: of that. And what she's saying is we want to
Speaker 1: slow it down to a point that the people, the
Speaker 1: American people, don't realize how much we're stealing from them.
Speaker 1: You see, if people get too much stolen from them,
Speaker 1: they become very angry. We see this happening in other
Speaker 1: countries all over the place, and it quickly erodes the currency.
Speaker 1: So she says that exactly, let's go ahead and play
Speaker 1: this next clip.
Speaker 3: Here, are you and President Biden happy with where inflation
Speaker 3: is right now?
Speaker 4: Well, look, we know that Americans are experiencing discomfort because
Speaker 4: some important prices are hires than they were pre pandemic.
Speaker 4: But what I think is really important is that wages
Speaker 4: have gone up along with prices.
Speaker 1: So she said that it's not really a problem. She said,
Speaker 1: some Americans feel it, you know, some Americans because some
Speaker 1: of the important things they need to buy have gone
Speaker 1: up some of them. But the important thing to keep
Speaker 1: in mind is that your wages have gone up. Okay,
Speaker 1: so that part is true, But the question is have
Speaker 1: wages gone up enough to offset the price is going up? Right?
Speaker 1: So she doesn't say that part, and that's the part
Speaker 1: that's the most important piece. So I want to break
Speaker 1: down this data for you. As a matter of fact.
Speaker 1: We'll look at how much prices have gone up, We'll
Speaker 1: look at how much wages have gone up, and we'll
Speaker 1: start to look at the fracturing going on in the
Speaker 1: economy in people's lives like you. We'll hear from a
Speaker 1: couple people they interviewed in this segment afterwards to hear
Speaker 1: what they have to say, and then of course we're
Speaker 1: going to talk about what you could be doing to
Speaker 1: protect yourself from this. If you're just tuning in and
Speaker 1: you're listening to the Mark Mas Show, of course we're
Speaker 1: talking about the way the world is changing as we
Speaker 1: look at through lens of politics, finance, and technology. Today
Speaker 1: we're talking about inflation, shrinkflation and why the government is
Speaker 1: gaslighting on it. We're back with more minute to oka
Speaker 1: away I'll wear back. All right, welcome back. So if
Speaker 1: you're just tune in, you're listening to the Mark Mass Show,
Speaker 1: we're talking about inflation or shrinkflation and why the government
Speaker 1: is on a full court press to gaslight you. We
Speaker 1: just listened to a clip from Janet Yellen going and
Speaker 1: addressing the nation on CBS News saying that, well, you know,
Speaker 1: some people might notice that some of the important things
Speaker 1: have gone up, but the important thing that they should
Speaker 1: know is that wages have gone up as well. Okay,
Speaker 1: so again that's true, but we have to dig into
Speaker 1: the data to find out is that true or not. So, yes,
Speaker 1: prices have gone up, and yes, wages have gone up.
Speaker 1: The question is have wages gone up more than the
Speaker 1: prices so or have they gone up less? Because at
Speaker 1: the end of the day, we're trying to figure out,
Speaker 1: if we cut through all this noise, is is our
Speaker 1: quality of life going up or down? Am I able
Speaker 1: to buy more goods and services in the future or
Speaker 1: less goods and services? Can I work less hours to
Speaker 1: achieve the same quality of life or less? Inflation has
Speaker 1: been taken that away as a matter of fact, inflation
Speaker 1: added was it three hundred dollars per month of increase.
Speaker 1: The for the average meetia and income in the United
Speaker 1: States at about three and twenty seven dollars a month
Speaker 1: just to maintain their average quality of life. And so
Speaker 1: if you make thirty two dollars an hour, that's ten
Speaker 1: extra hours per month you have to work in order
Speaker 1: to maintain the same quality of life that you had
Speaker 1: just a month before. So the question is are they
Speaker 1: going up? And the key there's a couple things that
Speaker 1: I want to dig into. We're going to go through
Speaker 1: these numbers. A couple things is, first of all, the
Speaker 1: price is going up. The CPI, the consumer price and
Speaker 1: inflation is given to us. That number is given to
Speaker 1: us by the BLS, the Bureau of Labor Statistics, which
Speaker 1: is the government. And it's important to understand that they
Speaker 1: change that the way they calculate that number all the
Speaker 1: time through since the eighties, since they started calculating that,
Speaker 1: there's been multiple occasions where they've overhauled it dramatically. They
Speaker 1: constantly manipulate the basket to get different types of outcomes.
Speaker 1: Will break that down for you, and so the number
Speaker 1: that they're telling us is the official government number, but
Speaker 1: it's not the real number. And this is why it's
Speaker 1: different for people like you and I is dealing with
Speaker 1: this on a daily basis than it is for them
Speaker 1: sitting on their high horse looking at official government data.
Speaker 1: Because the official government data is wrong. Let's play a
Speaker 1: clip right here of from the same interview with Jenna
Speaker 1: al and CBS, and let's hear what people have to
Speaker 1: say about this.
Speaker 3: And while economic data points to a healthy economy, a
Speaker 3: different story is playing out in their day to day lives.
Speaker 4: You have to get creative to supplement because it is
Speaker 4: not working.
Speaker 3: How do you feel? I worry who Saint Debaje struggles
Speaker 3: with inflation in his small businesses. So within my kitchen
Speaker 3: cabinetry company, it's completely different.
Speaker 1: I mean, the price of material continues to climb.
Speaker 3: What does that do to the volume of your business?
Speaker 1: It brings it down? Business is the valuation of his
Speaker 1: business is going down. It gets harder and harder for
Speaker 1: his business to succeed because the cost of his materials
Speaker 1: is going up too fast. That's what he said. The
Speaker 1: first person said that he has to continue to get
Speaker 1: more and more creative just to make ends meet, picking
Speaker 1: up gigwork, working side jobs, skimping right, buying lesser quality
Speaker 1: goods and services. So abstaining for buying goods and services, now,
Speaker 1: when that happens, that's that's a trickle down effect for
Speaker 1: the rest of the economy. If I abstain, if I
Speaker 1: go out to dinner less, if I buy less goods
Speaker 1: and services, that means all those businesses that I would
Speaker 1: have I would have gone to to buy those things
Speaker 1: suffer as well. So while they say the official data
Speaker 1: is actually good, the word on the street is the opposite.
Speaker 1: We can see that. Let's see here, wages have gone
Speaker 1: up with inflation. Perficial numbers Americans paychecks puzzle, almost two
Speaker 1: and three workers got to pay increase this year, but
Speaker 1: they say they lost ground to inflation. That's per Bank
Speaker 1: rate survey. So inflation has been coming down, but the
Speaker 1: prices don't. And this is a key piece. So what
Speaker 1: happens is inflation raged. As a matter of fact, we
Speaker 1: saw prices go up by about fifty percent over about
Speaker 1: a thirty six month period, and so it became unaffordable
Speaker 1: for most people. Then because of that, inflation went up.
Speaker 1: Then eventually the employers were forced to increase their rate
Speaker 1: of pay. So then the pay went up and inflation
Speaker 1: has slowed, so instead of seeing I mean, officially we
Speaker 1: got up to nine percent inflation, unofficially we were probably
Speaker 1: at twenty percent inflation depends on what goods and services
Speaker 1: that you're talking about, obviously, so we're seeing, you know,
Speaker 1: anywhere from ten to twenty percent inflation, and those prices
Speaker 1: go up exponentially because it's inflation on the inflation on
Speaker 1: the inflation. Now, inflation has slowed and wages have gone up.
Speaker 1: So the government's like, oh, good job, good job, good job.
Speaker 1: We've got inflation down to three percent, and now wage
Speaker 1: growth is that five percent, So good job. But it
Speaker 1: doesn't take into account that all those prices had just
Speaker 1: gone up fifty percent and people's pay didn't. See that's
Speaker 1: the thing. This is why there's this big disparity. So
Speaker 1: they want to point to the official data and tell
Speaker 1: you that what you're seeing, what's your feeling, it's not real.
Speaker 1: Now Biden says, it might be real, but it's actually
Speaker 1: the greedy business's fault. But what they're trying to tell
Speaker 1: you is that, as Jennet Yellen just said, but you know,
Speaker 1: the thing is is that wages are going up, you
Speaker 1: should be okay, you don't. You shouldn't have to go
Speaker 1: get so creative. Apparently now to Yellen's credit, like I said,
Speaker 1: wages did rise as a matter of fact from twenty
Speaker 1: twenty to twenty twenty two as the price of goods
Speaker 1: and services went up with higher inflation than wages went
Speaker 1: up to right, And now inflation has come down. But
Speaker 1: per the poll, only fourteen percent of American voters say
Speaker 1: they are better off financially now. They're better off financially
Speaker 1: under this current administration, which means that the eighty six
Speaker 1: percent believe that they are in a worse situation than
Speaker 1: when Biden took office. Now, this is not to make
Speaker 1: it political. It should not be political. Money should be neutral.
Speaker 1: And that's kind of the key piece that I had
Speaker 1: on all the time with a sound money standard. Money
Speaker 1: should not be a political tool. Money is what the
Speaker 1: money is. The economics is what the economics is. If
Speaker 1: you're a business owner, you made a bad business decision,
Speaker 1: that's on you. It shouldn't be a political decision. But
Speaker 1: yet here we are. And so because it is turned
Speaker 1: into a political situation, now we have American voters saying
Speaker 1: that it's the administration's fault that leads to that that
Speaker 1: makes sense. But we can see that wage growth has
Speaker 1: been slowing for a long time. And what we use,
Speaker 1: what the government uses, is something called real wage growth,
Speaker 1: and real wage growth is wage growth adjusted for inflation.
Speaker 1: And if we do that, we can see that Americans
Speaker 1: experienced negative real wage growth for the majority of twenty
Speaker 1: twenty one to twenty twenty two, which is exactly what
Speaker 1: I was talking about. But that's real wage growth. And
Speaker 1: again that also assumes that we're using the government's numbers.
Speaker 1: That's the problem with the real wag's growth is that
Speaker 1: we're using the manipulated CPI data. For example, many ways
Speaker 1: they manipulate the CPI data so they have like an adjustment.
Speaker 1: So what it's supposed to be is very simple. Right,
Speaker 1: So like I went to the grocery store. I bought
Speaker 1: a basket of goods, so I have my shopping cart,
Speaker 1: and I put my Ribbi steak, sixteen ounces of Ribby steak,
Speaker 1: I put one gallon of milk, I put one pound
Speaker 1: of cheese or whatever, right, and then it's supposed to
Speaker 1: track that same basket throughout over time, so we can
Speaker 1: see how price is changed. But the problem what they've
Speaker 1: done is they've changed the basket, so they have what's
Speaker 1: called substitution. So they say, well, we're not going to
Speaker 1: use a steak anymore, let's just put hamburger meat. Oh,
Speaker 1: hamberger meat's gone up too much. Well let's take out
Speaker 1: the low fat hammer meat and put the high fat
Speaker 1: hammger meat. Okay, let's take that out and let's put
Speaker 1: tofu in instead. And so they do the exchanges. Another
Speaker 1: thing that they do is they adjust the prices for
Speaker 1: improvement gains. So they'll say, for example, well gasoline quality
Speaker 1: has improved, so we're going to offset the improvement in
Speaker 1: gasoline for the price increases. Another big thing they do
Speaker 1: so about thirty five percent of the CPI basket is
Speaker 1: made up over home prices or rent prices, so it's
Speaker 1: not the cost of the home, it's the payment of
Speaker 1: the home. And what they do is they randomly pull people.
Speaker 1: I own multiple houses. I've never been pulled, so I'm
Speaker 1: not sure who they're pulling, but they just randomly pull
Speaker 1: people and ask them, hey, homeowner, what do you think
Speaker 1: you could rent your house for if you were going
Speaker 1: to rent it. So it's called the rent rent owner
Speaker 1: owner's equivalent. So they're just doing these random polls. That's
Speaker 1: where they get in the data. They're not pulling it
Speaker 1: from like rent dot com or Zillo. They're not pulling
Speaker 1: like actual data. They're just randomly pulling it. And that
Speaker 1: makes up thirty five percent of that CPI basket. So
Speaker 1: you can see how that is manipulated. If you're just
Speaker 1: tuning in, you're listening to the Mark Wall Show, we're
Speaker 1: talking about inflation. We're talking about shrinkflation. We're talking about
Speaker 1: why the government is trying to gaslight you on this.
Speaker 1: When we come back, I want to talk about why
Speaker 1: they've changed the definition of inflation, why that's been done,
Speaker 1: how understanding the true definition of it actually leads to
Speaker 1: us understanding this better, and then how that leads to
Speaker 1: us being able to formulate a plan to protect ourselves
Speaker 1: from this ad as is all going down. So don't
Speaker 1: want you don't want to miss this last piece. We're
Speaker 1: going to bring it all together. If you're just tuning in,
Speaker 1: you listening to the Mark Mass Show, don't go away.
Speaker 1: I'll be right back, all right, Welcome back. If you're
Speaker 1: just tuning in, you're listening to the Mark Mass Show,
Speaker 1: We're talking about shrinkflation. Inflation and why the government is
Speaker 1: on a full fledged attack to gaslight you on this subject.
Speaker 1: And so we talked about it. Let's just recap a
Speaker 1: couple of these pieces before we go into understanding it
Speaker 1: from a different angle and then how do we protect
Speaker 1: ourselves from it. But we saw Biden go on and
Speaker 1: address the world before the Super Bowl. We've seen mainstream
Speaker 1: media running pieces all week talking about how it's not
Speaker 1: as bad as people think it is. We've seen Janet Yellen,
Speaker 1: the head of US Treasury, just went on with an
Speaker 1: exclusive interview to explain that it's not as bad as
Speaker 1: people thinking his and wages have been going up and
Speaker 1: all of these things. So we have this full court
Speaker 1: press onto that. And part of the reason why to
Speaker 1: summarize this is because of what she said I played
Speaker 1: in the first clip. It's critical for the economy to
Speaker 1: be in a good place for the Biden administration for
Speaker 1: the reelection. She said that that was the first clip
Speaker 1: that we played, so you understand it now, and so
Speaker 1: understanding that tells us what is going to happen for
Speaker 1: the rest of the year. Like I said, a lot
Speaker 1: of people think that we're going to see some tough
Speaker 1: choices made, we're going to see some the FED pivot
Speaker 1: that everyone's waiting to see. Maybe won't come back because
Speaker 1: they're afraid of inflation. Maybe the fiscal government will spend
Speaker 1: less money because they're afraid of inflation. But what she's
Speaker 1: saying is that's not their main problem. Their main problem
Speaker 1: is getting Biden reelected, and the economy has to be
Speaker 1: strong for that. And so they would rather tell you
Speaker 1: that you don't see inflation, you don't suffer from inflation.
Speaker 1: Inflation's not a problem. As a matter of fact, inflations
Speaker 1: under control and your wages are growing. Just just trust
Speaker 1: them as your true source of trust so that they
Speaker 1: have cover to crank the inflation up even more. All right,
Speaker 1: So now that's sort of the high level of why
Speaker 1: we want to understand this. Now let's dig into inflation
Speaker 1: so we can understand this a little bit better. And
Speaker 1: what I mean here, Okay, the fundamental problem with understanding
Speaker 1: inflation and how it affects us and what we should
Speaker 1: be doing about it is the failure to define the
Speaker 1: problem properly. You see, what they call inflation isn't what
Speaker 1: I consider inflation. It looks like I think it's the
Speaker 1: wrong definition of it. Inflation is not. And this is
Speaker 1: per the Austrian school of economics, which they don't really
Speaker 1: teach in college because they don't want people to understand this.
Speaker 1: They want to teach you kinsy in economics. So it's
Speaker 1: distorted everything. One of the things that people, I don't
Speaker 1: know who they are, the leaders. What the government does
Speaker 1: is they try to change the definition of a word
Speaker 1: so that they can make it fit their use. Then
Speaker 1: they can win an argument. Okay, let me give you
Speaker 1: a couple examples of this. And this is obviously inflation
Speaker 1: is one. Let me use a different one. Let's say
Speaker 1: in the United States, we have a second Amendment, the
Speaker 1: right to bear arms. Well, that is guaranteed to us
Speaker 1: by our constitution, and it says in the Constitution, why
Speaker 1: that's guaranteed to prevent tyranny, right, and things like that,
Speaker 1: to keep it well armed militia. Right. It tells us that.
Speaker 1: But what the government has done is they tried to
Speaker 1: change the definition of that and they try to say that, well,
Speaker 1: the purpose of that was for self defense. You see,
Speaker 1: that's an argument they could win. But you don't need
Speaker 1: self defense. If nobody has a gun, then you don't
Speaker 1: need to have a gun, and why do you need
Speaker 1: to have a gun because the police have guns and
Speaker 1: they can protect you. See, they can win that argument.
Speaker 1: But the argument that it's meant for, which is we
Speaker 1: need to have well armed, militious and prevent against tyranny.
Speaker 1: How can the government protect against that? Specifically when they'rery
Speaker 1: to take your guns away? That proves the use case,
Speaker 1: proves the point. Right, That's one example. But back to
Speaker 1: this inflation. It's the same thing you see. Per the
Speaker 1: Austrian school of economics, inflation is not prices going up.
Speaker 1: It's not defined as rising prices. Rising prices is the
Speaker 1: long run result of inflation. So what is inflation. Inflation
Speaker 1: is when the money supply increases, when when the quantity
Speaker 1: of money and bank credit increases. So think of like
Speaker 1: a balloon. If I inflate a balloon, I increase the
Speaker 1: volume of the air inside the balloon. If I inflate
Speaker 1: the money, I'm increasing the volume or the quantity of
Speaker 1: the money. You see. So what they're trying to do
Speaker 1: is they change the definition to say it's prices, it's
Speaker 1: prices going up. But that's the wrong thing. Like I said,
Speaker 1: the prices of things going up is the long run
Speaker 1: result of the monetary inflation that happens, right, So that's
Speaker 1: all part of the gas lighting. And the reason why
Speaker 1: is because when inflation is seen as a general rise
Speaker 1: in prices, then anything that contributes to prices increasing is
Speaker 1: now called inflationary. So what do I mean by that?
Speaker 1: So you hear them talking about all the reasons, all
Speaker 1: these inflationary pressures, all these millions or billions of reasons
Speaker 1: why prices go up. Oh, it's the war in Ukraine
Speaker 1: and microchips got crimped and we can't get cars out
Speaker 1: fast enough because I have a microchip, and the supply
Speaker 1: chains broke down. And there's a million reasons why a
Speaker 1: price could go up on a good. And so when
Speaker 1: you look at it as inflation is prices going up, Well,
Speaker 1: there's a million reasons why the prices are going up.
Speaker 1: And what that does is it takes the pressure off
Speaker 1: the central bank and the fractional reserve banking system that
Speaker 1: are the actual sources of inflation. So instead of it's misdirection.
Speaker 1: Instead of going, oh, well, you increase the money supply,
Speaker 1: of course the price good goes up. Instead of that,
Speaker 1: they misdirect us and go, oh, well, it's supply chains,
Speaker 1: and it's Russia, and it's the Saudi Arabia with the oil,
Speaker 1: and it's any of the other millions of reasons, like
Speaker 1: what Biden does going on national TV and saying it's
Speaker 1: the greedy food company's fault, not that his administration printed
Speaker 1: trillions of dollars. And of course the Trump administration did
Speaker 1: trillions of dollars, and every administration before him did a
Speaker 1: lot of money as well. Every president left or right
Speaker 1: continues to print more money. This is not a bipartisan issue.
Speaker 1: This is both parties do this, the uniparty, if you will.
Speaker 1: But again by changing the definition they can win that.
Speaker 1: The other thing is that to measure, I don't know,
Speaker 1: billions of prices through a global economy through one simple
Speaker 1: number is just ludicrous in the beginning, in the beginning
Speaker 1: to even start with, so to say we have three
Speaker 1: percent inflation, three percent inflation of what you see, there's
Speaker 1: billions of prices, and there's always prices going down, and
Speaker 1: there's always prices going up at all times, and so
Speaker 1: inflation affects each of us differently. It affects us differently
Speaker 1: if we're in different countries, it affects us differently. Depending
Speaker 1: on what currency we're using, and it affects us based
Speaker 1: off of what we're buying. So, for example, if you
Speaker 1: live in a country like Argentina Lebanon using those local currencies,
Speaker 1: you're seeing massive inflation, or I should say, your currency
Speaker 1: is losing value very quickly. If I'm in America, and
Speaker 1: let's say that I live at my parents' house in
Speaker 1: their basement and I just watch, I stream movies, and
Speaker 1: I eat you know, pizza, well, my cost has actually
Speaker 1: gone down because movies are way cheaper than they were
Speaker 1: twenty years ago. And I used to have to buy DVDs, right,
Speaker 1: I imagine if I had to go buy a million DVDs
Speaker 1: and today I can just stream it for whatever ten
Speaker 1: bucks a month, the price has come down. I don't
Speaker 1: pay rent, so I haven't worried about that. And pizza,
Speaker 1: the price of pizza has come down, right, So like
Speaker 1: that hasn't hasn't affected me. But let's say that I'm
Speaker 1: a father of a couple of kids, which I am,
Speaker 1: and I live in expensive state like California, which I do,
Speaker 1: and you know, we need to drive a car so
Speaker 1: my wife can drive the kids and their friends around,
Speaker 1: and we want to send them to a good school.
Speaker 1: We want to play some sports afterwards, and we want
Speaker 1: to have you know, college and weddings and all those things.
Speaker 1: Then inflation is hitting us way harder because home prices
Speaker 1: went up by fifty percent. Steak which we eat and
Speaker 1: went up by fifty percent, gas which our big SUVs use,
Speaker 1: went up by fifty percent, and so it affects us
Speaker 1: much differently. So to measure the entire economy down into
Speaker 1: one number is ludicrous in the beginning, and ultimately, like
Speaker 1: I said, it diverts and misdirects from what the real
Speaker 1: problem is. So okay, what do we do about it?
Speaker 1: So obviously we need to increase our purchasing power. That's
Speaker 1: the goal, what we want. And I just asked the
Speaker 1: simple question all the time, what would you rather? Would
Speaker 1: you rather your money buy you more goodsness service in
Speaker 1: the future or less? And obviously everybody wants more. I
Speaker 1: say this typically in response to the some people think
Speaker 1: that we have to have inflation the money supply always
Speaker 1: has to expand otherwise, how will we have enough money
Speaker 1: for everybody, because as the population expands, we need to
Speaker 1: have enough money for everybody. But that's false, right If
Speaker 1: you think about we don't want money, we want the
Speaker 1: goodness services money buys us, and so you have either
Speaker 1: inflation in the money or you have inflation in the
Speaker 1: price of goods and services. If we had a fix
Speaker 1: money supply, the price of those goods and services would
Speaker 1: be less in the future and not more. So what
Speaker 1: we need to do is store our wealth into assets
Speaker 1: that are going up faster than inflation. The S and
Speaker 1: P five hundred and the average meeting home has been
Speaker 1: a perfect proxy for inflation, meaning it goes up just
Speaker 1: with inflation. It keeps your head above water. Gold has
Speaker 1: also been that way as well. There are assets that
Speaker 1: can be inflation. Bitcoin has been the best performing asset
Speaker 1: to do that. Bitcoin right now is crushing inflation, and
Speaker 1: if you look at it over a one year, three year,
Speaker 1: five year, ten year period, it's consistently done that. Sure,
Speaker 1: you can cherry pick a couple six months here and
Speaker 1: there that it hasn't, but it has also other scarce
Speaker 1: assets fine art, collectibles, old cars, old paintings, things like that,
Speaker 1: trophy real estate, so this would be around like lakefront,
Speaker 1: beachfront properties, things like that. But that is the key
Speaker 1: you have to protect yourself from inflation. You have to
Speaker 1: understand the real problem, and you have to understand why
Speaker 1: the government continues to want inflation to come if you're
Speaker 1: going to survive it. So hopefully that makes sense. If
Speaker 1: you're just tuning you into the Mark Mass Show talking
Speaker 1: about the shrink flation and the gaslighting from the government,
Speaker 1: that's what I got. Thanks so much for listening. Until
Speaker 1: next time.