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Home > Inflation - A Tax on your Savings

Inflation - A Tax on your Savings

January 29th, 2018 at 10:38 pm



You get taxed on your income, you get taxed when you spend it, you get taxed on your property, you get taxed when you visit other properties (hotel tax), and you get taxed when you die.  Americans are subject to taxes in every form.  What most people don't realize is that the government taxes savings as well.

Yep, after you put in your hard effort earning at a discount, buying at an increase and trying to make those ends meet, the government steals away a significant portion of the money responsible people and businesses set aside.  The money is taxed as you earn it, then anything unspent gets taxed repeatedly until it is reduced to nothing.  

What really drives my crazy is there's an old economic saying that you get more of what you subsidise and less of what you tax. The government is taxing the very behavior that prevents individuals and companies from needing bailouts and welfare programs. What does that lead to? More dependency, less freedom.

How are they stealing savings?
One word: Inflation

How is inflation the government stealing savings?
It should be fairly obvious that inflation causes the buying power of your savings to go down.  You might be able to buy milk today for $3.  In a few years, it might cost $5.  In other words, if you put your money into a stagnant account it lost 40% of its buying power.  By setting it aside for your future, you just made your $3 worth $1.8.

Even with an inflation as the current target of 2%, prices will double 2.3 times in the average lifetime. Increase that to 5% and you're looking at almost doubling 6 times! Even normal inflation levels can drastically reduce your wealth.

What is less obvious is how this puts it into the government's pocket.  Imagine you are in severe debt.  Wouldn't it be nice if dollars were worth less?  With a government as in debt as the United States, it is pretty easy to see why they might like inflation.

Inflation is a socialist.  It takes from the prudent and prosperous to benefit the reckless and failing.

But wait Milly, inflation has been near zero for a decade and hasn't been high since 1981.
I guess it all depends on how you measure inflation.

When you look at inflation data, it is usually represented by the CPI (consumer price index).  What is the CPI?  Supposedly it represents the price of household goods.

A tricky method many economists use is the

Text is "Core" CPI and Link is https://www.clevelandfed.org/newsroom-and-events/publications/economic-trends/2014-economic-trends/et-20140417-pce-and-cpi-inflation-whats-the-difference.aspx
"Core" CPI, a CPI that excludes energy and food.  The justification is that energy and food costs are much more volatile and large moves in those prices don't necessarily indicate true inflation.  The truth is that CPI isn't that great of an indicator unless you are averaging over a long time anyways, negating that argument.

The problem with "Core" CPI is that it is held artificially low by more heavily weighing items that rapidly decrease in price as technology develops.  Remember buying a 1G thumb drive a few years ago?  What does a 1G thumb drive sell for today?

Often they'll even take it a step further using hedonics. With the hedonic regression, they break items down past their unit price into their constituent parts. In other words, TV screens might be much more expensive than they were in 2000, but maybe the per pixel price has gone down, so they announce deflation. Who knows what formulas they use for completely new features on smart TVs. I can buy an amazing smart TV today for a few thousand dollars, where as in 2000, I would have had to pay a team of computer engineers to research it first. With that mentality, a smart TV's price has come WAY DOWN! Just look at the communications portion of 2017's CPI. Did your phone costs go down
Text is 4.9% and Link is https://www.bls.gov/opub/ted/2018/consumer-price-index-2017-in-review.htm
4.9%?

Now look at your own expenses from groceries to electricity to toys.  You know prices are going up.  When prices do go up, what is the first thing you start trying to adjust to meet your budget?  Probably energy and groceries, exactly what "Core" CPI doesn't include.  Energy and food matter a lot to the consumer!

The bottom line is that by using different indicators and clever math, inflation can be carefully crafted to whatever the Federal Reserve wants it to show and that means low inflation.  They've even kicked their game up a notch and are making a huge show to try and increase inflation, as if that is a good thing.  If they can get us excited about avoiding deflation, their job gets a lot easier.

Text is Latest CPI data and Link is http://countryeconomy.com/countries-cpi/usa
Latest CPI data broken down into subcategories and months
Text is Weighting of categories and Link is https://www.bls.gov/cpi/tables/relative-importance/home.htm
Weighting of categories and locations for the CPI (in 2014).  

I ran the numbers against my personal spending percentages for 2016 and the weighting they give each category (at least in 2014) seems reasonable.

Why are they concealing the true inflation?



Every time the Federal Reserve adds dollar, money  already distributed decreases its share of buying  power.  The United States depends heavily on borrowing.  If they let the rest of the world know what they are doing to the value of the dollar, who would loan us money?  At a minimum, they would demand interest to adjust with real inflation, something we simply cannot afford.

Officially low inflation also keeps domestic benefits cheaper.  If they released what the true inflation was, they'd have to also increase Social Security benefits.  Tax brackets would raise as well, limiting the money we give them.

Economists' Plea for More Inflation!
Just hiding inflation won't work forever though. On June 9, 2017, a group of 22 prominent economists including former Federal Reserve President Kocherlakota, wrote a letter urging then current Federal Reserve President Yellen to raise the target inflation rate above 2%.  The
Text is argument and Link is https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2017-06-09/the-fed-needs-a-better-inflation-target
argument is that with only 2% of room to play, there will not be enough "ammunition" in an economic downturn to raise up employment with near-zero interest rates (closely tied to inflation).  In other words, if the expected inflation was at 5%, near-zero interest rates would be closer to 5% lower than expected and produce a much faster recovery than a 2% lower than expected interest rate.

Kocherlakota also states, "periods of zero nominal rates are likely to "
Text is be more frequent and Link is https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2017-06-09/the-fed-needs-a-better-inflation-target
be more frequent".  With the current 2% inflation target, the rates will need to be at the "zero lower bound about 30 percent to 40 percent of the time."  It is clear that Kocherlakota sees that the economic times have changed and drastic measures must be used.

What is crazy is the Fed's are saying it is great that we are on track and even above our target 2% inflation as if that is good news. They also say that 3% is okay since inflation has been so low for so long. Three problems with that thought:
They are acting as if their target 2% is a benchmark to beat. Shooting an arrow a yard above your target isn't a good thing.  They are making it sounds like we don't need to worry about anything, we are already exceeding our annual goals!

It hasn't been near zero for long. It  averages pretty close to 2% since 2008.

Even if we were near zero for a decade, that mind-set is very hard on the consumer. Imagine going years of near zero inflation. In your perceived prosperity, you load up on all forms of debt.  Then, suddenly prices jump in one year. Between higher living costs and adjustable interest debt (such as credit cards) your budget becomes VERY tight.

Note: the other way they could achieve these results is to toy with Europe's idea of
Text is NEGATIVE interest rates and Link is https://www.bloomberg.com/quicktake/negative-interest-rates
NEGATIVE interest rates.  In other words, paying someone 3% for them to hold your money for you.  This idea could only work if money is trapped in the system.  Like in [href="http://money.cnn.com/2017/01/04/news/india/india-cash-crisis-rupee/index.html]India[/url], we could see a situation where paper money is forced to be converted to digital money, where Uncle Sam can see, track, and tax it all.

So how should we be measuring inflation?
Good question!

You could think of inflation as having two components, the supply of money and the velocity (how frequently the money is passed from person to person in a year) of that money. One is formed by monetary policy, the other by the behavior of the people within the economy. Let's start with money supply:

M3 - Broad Money



Money supply is measured in several categories.  The most useful in this case is
Text is M3 and Link is https://www.investopedia.com/terms/m/m3.asp
M3, or broad money.  This includes cash as well as assets easily liquidated into cash (savings accounts, money market accounts, CD's, repurchase agreements, etc.)  If you look at a historical chart of this number, it has been steadily increasing until 2006, when the Federal Reserve announced they would no longer provide M3 numbers (
Text is source and Link is https://www.federalreserve.gov/Releases/h6/discm3.htm
source).

When my daughter is about to do something she knows she'll get in trouble for, she shuts the door or asks me to go into a different room.  If broad money was increasing like it was when openly disclosed, what do you think has happened since 2006? If you check out 
Text is shadowstats.com and Link is http://www.shadowstats.com/alternate_data/money-supply-charts
shadowstats.com for a private sector calculation of the numbers, you can see a dramatic ramp up in money.  Is there any wonder why there was an inflated real estate bubble and a massive falling out in 2008 with double-digit percentage increases in broad money?

Note: to learn more about where money originates look here:
Text is What is Money? and the US Dollar Machine and Link is http://milly.savingadvice.com/2018/01/25/what-is-money-and-the-us-dollar-machine_214856/
What is Money? and the US Dollar Machine

Velocity
This component seemed strange to me at first. Why would exchanging money make it worth less? Try thinking about it this way. If twice as much money passes through your hands annually, but there are still the same number of products, the product will have to cost twice as much to prevent a shortage.

The Federal Reserve doesn't seem to be worried about inflation because they believe in a "
Text is goldilocks economy and Link is https://www.investopedia.com/terms/g/goldilockseconomy.asp
goldilocks economy" that is not too hot and not too cold which is easily tuned with economic easing/tightening if something does get a little out of balance.

What they fail to realize is how behavioral based the velocity component is. Right now, as businesses and families feel economic strain, they look towards securing their future and save money as best as they can.

What happens if inflation breaks out even just a little? Suddenly, analysts will advise corporations to spend on upgrades, inventory, and raw supplies while their money has more power. With the increased corporation spending, prices will rise and individuals will catch on. With a subtle shift, that saving could turn to a spending frenzy that grows exponentially.

I think we are sitting on a situation even more volatile today than in any of the historical hyper inflation stories. On the corporate level, companies rely on computer data and analysts more than ever. With this data and statistical analysis, the strategy has become operate on the tiniest margin possible to capture the largest market share. What happens when a company as large as Walmart or Amazon notice a bad inflation trajectory? Dollars will pour into the economy as fast as the companies can wisely manage it as they scramble to protect their tiny margins.

On the individual level, social media can create massive behavioral movements in just a few days. As each move is made, more parties will catch on and the more aggressive each party will have to become.

What can we Do about it?
There really isn't much we can do to stop the problem except spreading awareness and electing officials brave enough to stand against the Federal Reserve.  Luckily, you can protect yourself from the effects.  When you are storing your economic resources, don't leave the bulk of it exposed to inflation.

The commonly advertised way to do remove the effects of inflation is by investing in TIPS (Treasury Inflation Protected Securities).  When inflation increases, so does the payout.  One major problem, the official inflation tracks CPI, not the money supply/velocity.  Your savings will still get eaten by the dying power of the dollar and you are back where we started.

Here's what you should do.  Keep your emergency funds liquid and ready, but diversify your deep savings such as retirement.  Most people think diversifying their portfolio means investing in various stocks and bonds.  But what happens if it is the dollar that crashes?  All of those deals and obligations become worthless regardless of how diverse they were.  Instead invest in some domestic stocks, some foreign stocks, some real estate, some
Text is precious metals and Link is http://milly.savingadvice.com/2018/01/19/why-you-need-precious-metals-in-your-inv_214782/
precious metals, some in long shelf-life food storage, and most importantly invest in your own personal education and skills.  With a diverse portfolio like that, you can weather any depth of economic crisis and make it out just fine.

Further reading:
Peter Schiff's
Text is Crash Proof 2.0 and Link is https://www.amazon.com/Crash-Proof-2-0-Economic-Collapse/dp/111815200X/
Crash Proof 2.0
Text is What is your money? and the US dollar machine and Link is http://milly.savingadvice.com/2018/01/25/what-is-money-and-the-us-dollar-machine_214856/
What is your money? and the US dollar machine
Upcoming US Economic Collapse - How and Why (coming in a future post)
How NOT to Prepare for the Economic Crisis (coming in a future post)




Disclaimer: I am not a licensed or certified financial coach, planner or adviser, just an enthusiast.  Anything I recommend should be personally analyzed and discussed with your financial adviser.

1 Responses to “Inflation - A Tax on your Savings”

  1. Milly Says:
    1518456078

    I am glad you appreciated it! What kick started my financial education journey was reading Robert Kiyosaki's "Rich Dad, Poor Dad". I am greatly opposed to his load up on "good debt" strategy, but it taught me that "savers are losers". The government punishes savers with inflation. If you don't want your money eaten up, you need to do it intentionally. So far here's my anti-inflation strategy: put your much of your stagnant savings into
    Text is precious metals and Link is http://milly.savingadvice.com/2018/01/19/why-you-need-precious-metals-in-your-inv_214782/
    precious metals or other value holding resources (land, oil, etc.), and a good portion of your investment money into foreign stocks.

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