This is becoming more serious than I thought.
The CPI numbers came out this week and it’s not looking good. Welcome to the world of having front desk workers with starting wages in the mid 20’s, assistants in the mid 30’s and hygienists in the mid 40’s.
That might not be a bad thing if you’re a front staff, assistant or hygienist or even a dentist.
I should remind you the CPI is the Consumer Price Index. And it’s sort of a gauge of inflation in the U.S. I say sort of, because when you dive deeper into the details of what products and consumables are measured it becomes mired in controversy. Inflation affects someone with lower wages differently than someone with higher wages and assets.
Let’s take a quick look at one of the charts in the report:
Well hold my biscuits as I spit out my coffee looking at that far right column. ‘Unadjusted 12-mos ended Jul. 2021’
Look at that 41.7% for Used Cars. You would’ve made more money had you bought a Used Car at the beginning of the pandemic and flipped it today instead of buying a S&P 500 Index fund in which it has performed a not too shabby 32.23%
If we look at the CPI report’s next chart it shows us just how expensive everything is getting:
Normally the Fed wants that CPI number to hover just around 2%, which it does from July 2020 to February 2021.
The Fed says this inflation is ‘transitory’. And if we look up the google definition of transitory we get:
That is sooooo open ended. It’s like telling your patient that all their teeth are transitory. Healthy or not. Everybody’s tooth is transitory. At some point you could lose the tooth to perio, car accident or morbidly death.
They are changing their tune and not many people are paying close attention. There’s already so many things going on with your own life, mask or no mask, vaccine or no vaccine. Why the hell would you even care what some old guy at the Fed says.
Because the only thing I can guarantee you is the hurt we all will be taking. The Gov just approved a Trillion dollar infrastructure bill. There is already discussion for a new 3.5 Trillion bill. They now throw the word Trillion like they used to throw out million or billion. But as you already know in my past episodes, these terms are exponentials.
1 Million = 1 Million 1,000,000
1 Billion = 1,000 Million 1,000,000,000
1 Trillion = 1,000,000 Millions 1,000,000,000,000
Your select patients will have to afford a $3,000 crown. You will have to offer your hygienist $50 to just keep her. And if you thought all the supplies were expensive each month, tack on another 5% for everything next year. Inflation isn’t transitory, after prices go up, they simply stay because these costs get passed down from one to another.
The good news is that toilet paper is readily available at the moment and if you need to sell your used car, you’re going to get a hell of a lot of money for it.
Lam