June 1, 2014

Inflation and Deflation in Consumer Goods

Whenever you hear about inflation you hear about prices going up for something like gasoline, food, college tuition or health care.   Rarely do we hear reports about the items where prices are going down.    But we have major categories of goods where prices do go down and have been on downward trends for some time.    The reality is that for goods a lot of prices go up but a lot also go down.   I think its interesting to see the trend for various products and note the items that have gone down or been flat rather than just focus on only the prices that go up.

Below are the price index graphs for 10 years from 2003 to 2013 for several categories of products.  All of these charts are straight off the BLS.gov site.    I got them by pulling data out of the BLS CPI site for the Department store inventory price index.

Mens Shoes

Infant wear and Furniture

Mens Clothing


Jewelry and silverware
Toilet articles and drugs


Furniture and bedding


Housewares


Major appliances

Radios and television sets

Home improvements

Auto accessories




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