A new, and probably improved, inflation indicator, from Schiffgold at schiffgold.com:
Anyone who has been to a restaurant, a grocery store, or the car lot during the Biden administration can’t deny the reality of inflation. But despite what the federal government is saying about the success of its anti-inflation efforts red flags for inflation keep popping up in the strangest places.
Take the Las Vegas Strip. Casinos on the Strip, long known for trying to take the money of everyone from the highest high-rolling whale to the coupon-clipping low-roller camped out at Motel 6 or Excalibur Casino, are now finally admitting that some dollars aren’t worth the effort of taking. In August, the Wall Street Journal reported on the declining number of tables where you could play blackjack in Las Vegas while the amount of revenue earned from blackjack stayed high even as casinos offered worse rules to players, such as paying out 6:5 when a player receives a “blackjack” rather than the traditional 3:2. Strip casinos are also doing away with low table limits, meaning that players that want to risk $5 or $10 on a single hand of blackjack are struggling to find a game.
The optimistic interpretation offered by the article is that casinos on the strip are successfully pivoting to cater to a higher-end audience and are raising not just table limits for games like blackjack but also the price of hotel rooms. But the disappearance of low-priced gambling options is happening at places far from the glamorous Las Vegas Strip.
A sibling who travels around in retirement years says they should shut down Sin City for a week and just fumigate or water down everything because some parts actually reek.
Picked up some dozen donuts and whipped cream earlier for fam and out of a fiver 50 cents in change.
Gas has shot up close to fifty cents even with an petroleum processing town next door due to the foreign policy genius moves of Brandon.
We must organize the intellectuals and use them to make Western civilization stink. Only then, after they have corrupted all its values and made life impossible, can we impose the dictatorship of the proletariat.
–Willi Münzenberg, Frankfurt School