Chronicles of an Inflation-free Economy, #4822…
Our neighborhood HOA fee is going up 18 percent for 2025. The management fee (same firm) is going up 43 percent. Xfinity’s fee for cable TV to every household is going up 7 percent (each house must separately purchase Internet service). Xfinity’s fee for telephone/Internet service at the clubhouse is going up 70 percent to $7,000/year. Landscaping and irrigation services are going up substantially, but perhaps that reflects the landscape and systems getting older (22 years). “Janitorial” (cleaning our clubhouse/gym, mostly?) is going up 13 percent. Insurance is going up 10 percent.
From the Official Newspaper of Inflation is Transitory….
BARF raised fares another 5.5%. The rate cutting campaign is all being paid for with falling used car prices. Don’t know how you ended up on xfinity’s leash, that far away from Calif*.
Comcast is headquartered in Philly and has been national for decades. Of the states where they do business, their lowest coverage is California:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xfinity#Comcast_Internet_availability_by_state
I trust government data. The current rate of inflation is below 3%. The maintenance charges for my Manhattan co-op is going to increase 3.4% for 2025. We are not living in a high inflation environment. Actually some items are now cheaper, used cars for example.
https://www.bls.gov/news.release/cpi.nr0.htm
Anon: Here’s some government data.. The current rate for a first class stamp from the government-run USPS is 73 cents. It was 68 cents in July (see https://about.usps.com/who/profile/history/domestic-letter-rates-since-1863.htm for the history and also https://about.usps.com/newsroom/national-releases/2024/0409-usps-recommends-new-prices-for-july-2024.htm ). If we call that a 6-month period, inflation according to the US government is 15 percent per year (73 cents vs. 68 cents is 7.35 percent higher, but we need to annualize that).
Anon: used cars are cheaper? Why is car insurance up about 20 percent for 2024 vs. 2023? (see https://www.kbb.com/car-news/study-car-insurance-prices-will-jump-22-this-year/ ) A car insurer is promising to pay the price of a used car in the event of a total loss.
The data shows that the price of USPS stamps has been rising fast, even during periods of very low inflation or even deflation (2009). The price of USPS mail is not driven by market forces; if it were, demand has crashed to such an extent that prices would be decreasing or (more likely) the “company” would have gone out of business.
It is entirely possible to have an economic environment where car prices decrease while insurance costs increase. Modern cars are more difficult to repair and are totaled at a much higher rate than in the past.
There is one segment of the U.S. economy where prices consistently outpace inflation: healthcare.
Lol, $7000 for internet service at the club.
As for staying at a NYC hotel, I seem to recall there are a lot of asylum seekers doing this now on the government dime. Probably drives up prices.
Why not get starlink at around 100 bucks a month for the club?
“The management fee (same firm) is going up 43 percent”
“Xfinity’s fee for telephone/Internet service at the clubhouse is going up 70 percent”
The former strongly implies you have corruption in your HOA board (assuming they’re not looking to switch). The latter presumably indicates the same, or that Xfinity has a local monopoly.
But assuming your HOA does have options, this type of gouging reminds me of a theory of crime prevention I once read.
Suppose you have a city with a major crime problem, with lots of crime of all types, too much in aggregate for any plausibly provided police force to deal with more than small minority of cases. What’s the city government to do? The idea is that you pick one type of crime, say assaults, and redirect nearly all policing & prosecution efforts to that one type, with the goal of reaching near-certain arrest rates, even if this gives very bad ROI (crime prevented per $) in the short term. Criminologists generally agree that *certainty* of punishment is far more effective as a deterrent than severity. So if you make it highly likely that a given crime gets punished, you should see a massive drop-off in that type of crime. This means that you can now redirect your policing efforts to a new type, say burglaries. Rinse and repeat, but always making sure to come back down *hard* on categories already won.
What’s this got to do with your HOA? ANY business raising rates by 43% without a clear cost explanation is obviously grossly confident you won’t switch your business. My theory is that they’re right… because people are no longer willing to take a personal ROI “loss” by paying switching costs anymore. I imagine there might have been a time before the current learned helplessness where this kind of price gouging would have been taken as offensive to “decency” or something like that. People would more likely spend disproportionate effort to signal that they would not suffer such “insult” and the deterrent effect mostly worked.
We are stuck with Xfinity because they’re the only provider that has a cable to every house (about 130 total). People have tried to get AT&T and Hotwire interested in laying down fiber, but so far with no success (for some reason, AT&T already has fiber down one street that contains about 30 of the neighborhood houses; I call those the royalty, but in fact I don’t think many of them take advantage of the Gbit symmetric service. They’re already getting cable TV bundled into their HOA fee so the easiest thing to do is pay Xfinity for Internet on top of the HOA package (no HBO, but each house gets three cable boxes)).
We had a different management company 2.5 years ago. So the current board (no changes since then) has shown an ability to switch vendors.
> We had a different management company 2.5 years ago. So the current board (no changes since then) has shown an ability to switch vendors.
The fact that the current board picked the current supplier only makes me *more* curious if one of the board members has a personal connection or is getting kickbacks.
> We are stuck with Xfinity because they’re the only provider that has a cable to every house (about 130 total). … They’re already getting cable TV bundled into their HOA fee…
Does the cable-for-every-house bundling contract require the clubhouse as well? If so, then perhaps the bundle deal is good enough even with the extra $7000 amortized across every house. Or Xfinity knows that telling HOA members “We’re not bundling cable with the HOA anymore but you will save money by subscribing directly” would infuriate the average american. Having to set up a new cable subscription on their own? A potential few days without TV during the service switchover? Outrageous!
As a streaming-only consumer I’m just glad I’m not in your HOA, stuck paying for cable I don’t want.
The reason hotels are so expensive in NYC is because they outlawed all airbnbs.
An acquaintance recently had dinner at a steakhouse in DC. The bill for 4 people, no alcohol, was $800. The DC economy seems to be booming?
Our property insurance was jacked 30% this year. Wasn’t aware we had 30% more hurricane damage these past few years. Have to go back to ’91 for a named ‘cane. So…shopping for a new carrier.