The complaints of inflation are insane.

[Kaitzilla]

Increased 0.75% today July 27th to an upper range of 2.5%!

Fed piles pressure on Bank of England with drastic new rate rise

The Federal Reserve has raised interest rates by 0.

www.telegraph.co.uk

Should be one more big one in a month and then ???

The Fed increased their rate target to 3%-3.25% on September 21st.

The Fed increased their rate target to 3.75%-4% on November 2nd.

The Fed will ??? on December 14th.

Woops, missed a month.


In July the USA annual inflation rate for July 2022 was 8.5%

Consumer prices rose by 8.5% year over year in July as the summer of inflation wears on

A key measure of inflation, the Consumer Price Index, remained near 40-year highs for another month, even as the Federal Reserve tries to slow demand.

www.nbcnews.com

The USA annual inflation rate for August 2022 was 8.3%

Inflation dipped in August, but remains stubbornly high

Although the annual U.S. inflation rate fell to 8.3%, Americans are still facing painfully high costs for food, rent and other staples.

www.cbsnews.com

Gasoline has been going down, but diesel has been steady and food prices have really been surging.


A dollar now gets 144 yen.
1 dollar still gets precisely 1 euro.

I'm not sure what Japan will do since they won't raise interest rates to defend their currency.
Welcome back Covid-plagued tourists?

Historically after World War 2 the yen during the Bretton Woods system was fixed at 360 yen to 1 dollar, then allowed to float in 1971.

Dollar Yen Exchange Rate (USD JPY) - Historical Chart

Interactive historical chart showing the daily U.S. Dollar - Japanese Yen (USDJPY) exchange rate back to 1971.

www.macrotrends.net

It probably won't go higher than 150 right?

The USA annual inflation rate for September 2022 was 8.2%


A dollar now gets 147 yen after the Bank of Japan spent $43 billion to support the yen in October.

Japan Govt Spent $43 Bn To Bolster Yen In October

Japan's finance ministry said Monday it spent $43 billion in October to bolster the value of the yen, which has tumbled against the dollar this year to lows not seen since the 1990s.

www.barrons.com

 

[r16]

85% in official numbers , 185% in unofficial numbers , beat Argentina in some parameters ı have no clue about , economy with the worst trends .

 

[innonimatu]

In 1919 the US Army set out to see what it would take to drive across the country. Future president Eisenhower was along for the ride. A very well prepared Army unit took 56 days to travel from Washington DC to San Francisco. Today 1 man with 1 truck can take 40 tons of freight there in 5 days.

Simply put, the value of economic output of a person per unit of time is vastly higher now than it was in the past. This increase in the value of the output is in part because people are more educated and healthier. But largely because we keep inventing new ways to use resources in more valuable ways. Or find ways to make resources that we did not use in the past of value now.
[...]
All of this is made possible by the invention of new wealth. Wealth does not flow from iron or oil or land. Wealth flows from new ideas on how to use resources that have always existed. We just use them all better now.

You are putting too much credit on technology. How much energy did that army unit spent in 1919, and how much energy does it spend in 2022?
Energy is the key limit, new technology just allowed us to capture and use more of it. There are other resources too which are not infinite. But make a graph of economic growth versus energy use per capita and be scared.

And energy is a hard limit because at some point, even if we were to discover magic unicorn energy, we would boil out the oceans using it. There is a limit to how much the planet can radiate without raising surface temperature significantly. We won't be able to go on as we did in the 20th century. The trend won't hold.

As a race, humanity must really sort out what to do in the future with this planet we depend on. It has a carrying capacity, Malthus will be wrong only for so long. Spending energy trading pictures of smiling apes and calling it economic growth won't do. Not everything new is fine and dandy.

 

[Cutlass]

You are putting too much credit on technology. How much energy did that army unit spent in 1919, and how much energy does it spend in 2022?
Energy is the key limit, new technology just allowed us to capture and use more of it. There are other resources too which are not infinite. But make a graph of economic growth versus energy use per capita and be scared.

And energy is a hard limit because at some point, even if we were to discover magic unicorn energy, we would boil out the oceans using it. There is a limit to how much the planet can radiate without raising surface temperature significantly. We won't be able to go on as we did in the 20th century. The trend won't hold.

As a race, humanity must really sort out what to do in the future with this planet we depend on. It has a carrying capacity, Malthus will be wrong only for so long. Spending energy trading pictures of smiling apes and calling it economic growth won't do. Not everything new is fine and dandy.

"Less."

 

[Hygro]

"Less."

Jevons paradox - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

 

[Lexicus]

"Less."

Looking at the equipment of the respective units, there's no way the unit in 1919 used less energy than an equivalent unit would use today.

 

[Joij21]

There is a limit to how much the planet can radiate without raising surface temperature significantly.

Yeah but our demand will never reach such theoretical limits. You'd have to be using a hell of a lot of energy for such significant heat buildup. I'm presuming your specifically referring to heat loss during energy transfer rather then greenhouse emissions? I mean the greenhouse emissions will heat everything up faster, but if one uses non greenhouse gas byproduct sources of energy then the regular heat transfer byproduct will take much longer to have any real impact. Also as long as the energy being consumed at one time is less then the planet's surface area capacity to radiate via infrared, it's not a problem.

If humanity ever does become such an energy hog, earth would have to become a eucenopolis world before that begins to become a problem. Should energy like that be necessary people will most likely be spread out over many planets, or live remotely on nomadic super spaceships, or a large Dyson Sphere with a giant surface area would resolve it.

But honestly such heat related deaths are so far into the future, why do you even care? I mean humans that far in time would hardly be human let alone relatable. Descendents and things like progeny also don't tend to matter under such vast time quantities. Just think about it, would one's pagan ancestors really sympathize with one's later Christian ancestors? Or would it be a blasphemy to abandon said old gods for the new? What about one's more immediate Christian ancestors to their current secular/atheist descendants and Pagan ancestors before? Would they then condemn their pagan forefathers as sinful/unforgivable for worshipping false gods and their descendants who have now lost the faith equally so? And the current generation who condemns those before as stupid, ignorant, and full of childlike superstition? What would the pagans feel about the current generation? Perhaps equally as disturbed as the Christian ones for seeing no faith at all?

Generations tend to hate other generations as time migrates them apart, until the hatred for both future and past becomes mutual. You're gonna hate your far flung descendants, I garuntee it!

 

[Cutlass]

Looking at the equipment of the respective units, there's no way the unit in 1919 used less energy than an equivalent unit would use today.

There's no possibility whatsoever of that being true. Unit of work accomplished per unit of energy input has been going down since the dawn of civilization. It has just accelerated massively since industrialization.

What is true, as Hygro suggested, is that we have just massively increased the quantity of work being done. It takes less fuel to send a ton of freight from New York to Los Angeles today than at any time in the past. It takes less labor to do so. The fuel itself takes less labor to produce.

So we use more of it, and just send more tons of freight.

 

[El_Machinae]

Can you clarify what question you were answering when you said "less"? I think everyone is one the same page, holding a different part of the elephant.

But make a graph of economic growth versus energy use per capita and be scared.

This is an interesting question, though I'd want to make sure to get the units correct (i.e., measure what we actually wanna measure, mainstream definitions be damned)

 

[Hygro]

I mean you're both right it just depends on the terms.

Energy use per unit day? Way up.

Energy use per doing exactly and only what that unit's mission, just with modern roads and trucks? Way down.

We know that the efficiencies gained by innovation turn into more total work and more total usage of that energy so, as Jevons so cleanly figured out studying coal ~150 years ago, without restrictions and regulations, we will only innovate our way deeper into the problem. There is no engineering-only solution to the environment. Not in capitalism, nor in the preceding systems. The closest we could do is innovate at a rate that buys us time to innovate to buy us time. That isn't what we have now, unless there's some incredible on-trend fix right around the corner or you excuse the coming losses as within acceptable "bought time".

 

[Cutlass]

Can you clarify what question you were answering when you said "less"? I think everyone is one the same page, holding a different part of the elephant.




This is an interesting question, though I'd want to make sure to get the units correct (i.e., measure what we actually wanna measure, mainstream definitions be damned)

Put in the simplest terms, the unit energy input for each unit of economic output is down. Way the fudge down. Incredibly down.

But, because of that, it has simply become cheaper to use more energy.

Labor, capital, and energy, are all both subsititutes and compliments. We can always use more of some combination of 2 in order to reduce the use of the 3rd. For the most part, economic growth is a combination of using capital and energy in the place of labor. So there is more output per unit of labor input. And this is the basis for rising living standards. But at the same time, the efficiency of the use of energy has increased. So there is less energy input per unit of economic output.

Further, past a certain point, knowledge work becomes a bigger share, and so the more energy intensive production work becomes a lesser share, of the economy. And that means even less energy per unit of economic output.


So no matter what we could do 100 years ago, it just takes less effort to do now. And we can also do vastly more things now than were even known then.

 

[Hygro]

Put in the simplest terms, the unit energy input for each unit of economic output is down. Way the fudge down. Incredibly down.

But, because of that, it has simply become cheaper to use more energy.

Labor, capital, and energy, are all both subsititutes and compliments. We can always use more of some combination of 2 in order to reduce the use of the 3rd. For the most part, economic growth is a combination of using capital and energy in the place of labor. So there is more output per unit of labor input. And this is the basis for rising living standards. But at the same time, the efficiency of the use of energy has increased. So there is less energy input per unit of economic output.

Further, past a certain point, knowledge work becomes a bigger share, and so the more energy intensive production work becomes a lesser share, of the economy. And that means even less energy per unit of economic output.


So no matter what we could do 100 years ago, it just takes less effort to do now. And we can also do vastly more things now than were even known then.

I would argue that energy is an input to both labor and capital rather than a third category. Here's a lecture examining the current popular hypotheses, the empirical findings, and remodeling the energy hypothesis as a labor/capital input instead of third leg, and how it suddenly matches the empirical reality much closer.

 

[Lexicus]

There's no possibility whatsoever of that being true. Unit of work accomplished per unit of energy input has been going down since the dawn of civilization. It has just accelerated massively since industrialization.

You really think that a typical US army unit uses less fuel now than an equivalent one would have in 1919? The units have many more vehicles and the vehicles require more fuel. There was also a massive amount of energy used to create the infrastructure that makes the trip easier today than it was then.

I agree with your definition of economic growth, but it's absolutely true that in energy terms we've gained in efficiency and all the efficiency gains have gone to doing more stuff, rather than doing the same stuff with fewer inputs.

 

[innonimatu]

It takes less fuel to send a ton of freight from New York to Los Angeles today than at any time in the past. It takes less labor to do so. The fuel itself takes less labor to produce.

It does not take less energy except past great technological changes. What was easy to gain has been gained.

Taking this case in particular. The less energy intensive way to move freight overland between those two cities is train. Trains have had one major technological step in the 20th century, the move from steam engines to diesel. It's true that diesel trains are 3 or 4 times more energy efficient than coal trains. But that's it. Little has changed since. Tech-optimism was justified until the later part of the 20th century. Since then what have we had besides electronics? Even those seem to be hitting a wall.

So if more is being done, it's by using more energy. That was why I pointed out the energy use per capita. That is the thing which has followed economic growth very closely.

 

[Broken_Erika]

Well, how much diesel does it take to power a modern train vs how much coal a 19th century steam train would need for the same load and distance?

 

[innonimatu]

Diesel very much beats coal, no argument against that. But diesel has near 50% thermal efficiency already. The low-hanging fruit has been picked clean.And the not-so-low hanging.

 

[El_Machinae]

There are so many metrics.

Value created per unit energy, and its exponential path

Energy harnessed per unit energy, and the step change trajectories of each technology.

Total maximum value achievable: practical and theoretical

Total energy harnassable, per energy type.

 

[innonimatu]

@El_Machinae whatever metrics are used, we always arrive at energy as a hard limit. And contrary to the pretty tales of economists and politicians, the physics says that this myth of progress cannot last.

This is a recent paper by a physicist on this exact topic. Just looking at the trend in energy use and extrapolating:

In a continued progression, we would exceed the total solar power incident on Earth in just over 400 years, the entire output of the Sun in all directions 1,300 years from now, and that of all 100 billion stars in the Milky Way galaxy 1,100 years after that. This last jump is made impossible by the fact that even light cannot cross the galaxy in fewer than 100,000 years. Thus, physics puts a hard limit on how long our energy growth enterprise could possibly continue

This means that even the techno-bros escape plans of settling other planecs cannot work to sustain the trend. It0's literaly physically impossible to continue "growing" at the rate we're user to.

There's a nice example on lighting, about how we're nearly as efficient as possible already:

Historical progress in lighting efficiency can give the mistaken impression that a long chain of superior substitutes might continue indefinitely. But we are fast approaching the hard physical limit.

We are already "cheating" on the so-called "economic growth", as he actually mentions without developing:

Continued economic growth in the face of steady-state physical resources would require all growth to be effectively in the non-physical sector, possibly assisted by modest efficiency improvements in how we use physical resources. If, for example, 50% of economic activity is tied to physical resources, 100 years later only 5% of the economy would be represented by physical activities, as the economy will have expanded by a factor of ten for the same physical footprint. In 200 years, the physical component is 0.5%. Projected forward, the physical fraction becomes arbitrarily small.

This has been the trend fictional property, and trading on it. But even the trade on this consumes increasing amounts of energy, as one can verify looking at electricity use in data centres.

This is an example that can be generalized to many technologies. I have long been entirely in agreement with his conclusion:

An end to quantitative economic growth need not translate to an end to innovation or other forms of qualitative development and improvement. But growth as we have known it will no longer be able to drive the way civilization operates. The entire financial, economic, political and social system will be forced to undergo radical change, leaving something bearing little resemblance to today’s world

 

[Lexicus]

The entire financial, economic, political and social system will be forced to undergo radical change, leaving something bearing little resemblance to today’s world

 

[El_Machinae]

I see nothing wrong with the conclusions that the trendlines can only be extrapolated so far. Even I, the weirdest transhumanist on CFC in the aughties, didn't know what I was going to do after I colonized a star. The definition of growth we have now isn't really workable. Applying it to whatever happens after any step-change surprises (up or down) doesn't really make sense either.

As a parent, I do get distressed at graphs that end at 2100 CE. I've kids who'll be alive then. Some of the people on the board will be alive then. Like, we kinda should have some guesses as to what might happen then, and then tweak towards the better possible outcomes.