Saturday, May 12, 2012

Price Inflation Hits the DC-NYC Bus Ticket

Anthony Trevisan emails:
I am from DC but live in NYC. When I go home, I take the bus back and forth as it has always been cheap and easy. Unfortunately, I noticed that ticket prices were recently increased 15% on Tripper Bus!

It used to be $25 per ticket and every fifth ticket was free. This amounts to $20 per ticket. The price increased to $27 per ticket, but now every seventh ticket is free. This amounts to $23.14 per ticket or a 15.7% increase.

But of course, inflation is only 2% per year. I guess when you travel between the two cities on a jet paid for by US taxpayers, it is hard to see the price increases.
Anthony, yes exactly! Ben Bernanke doesn't take a bus and when he travels on Fed money printing business, the Fed pays for it out of interest earned on the Treasury bills bought with money printed up by the Fed. Get it? In his world, there is no price inflation, because he pays for hardly anything. The Fed pays for it.

BTW, as you know, it's only going to get worse.

7 comments:

  1. Ah, but you see if the price of busing went up, then people would choose another method of transportation, and that would bring the CPI down.

    I suggest that people may replace using the bus with astral traveling or teleportation.

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    Replies
    1. Don't you mean telecommuting?

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    2. Haha no, strictly tongue in cheek.

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  2. I would have thought Wenzel learned to stop using such absolute statements as "it's only going to get worse."

    After saying gasoline prices in Chicago would "only going to get worse", the very next day gas prices started fall!
    http://www.economicpolicyjournal.com/2012/03/gasoline-price-hits-record-467-in.html

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  3. In related news, tolls on the Garden State Parkway and New Jersey Turnpike doubled starting the beginning of this year.

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  4. Thisguy, I wonder if what you're describing is actually an eye of a hurricane type of situation? Seems like the storm is over right now and it's all back to normal, doesn't it? So People make plans around this normal and when gas goes up in price, things will be much worse for those who took that path instead of factoring in higher future prices. Is that what they call mal-investments?

    Time will tell.

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