It’s the 25th anniversary of the Islamic jihad that brought down the World Trade Center. The Bureau of Labor Statistics will mark this solemn event by releasing updated CPI statistics. (From state-sponsored PBS: “The consumer price index rose 3.4% last month compared with a year ago, the Labor Department said Friday, the same as in July. But on a monthly basis, inflation quickened, as costs jumped 0.4% from July to August, up from an increase of just 0.1% the previous month.”)
April 2022, an order for a Speakman S-2251-PB shower head at $136:
June 2025, the same shower head for a different bathroom, up to $154:
July 29, 2026, $344:
Helpful hint: Do not allow anyone to knock out or pull out the plastic water restrictor because the result is a powerful torrent of shower (5 gpm?).
What can explain this level of Speakflation? The Islamic Republic of Iran is buying up all of the brass for use in the weapons that they continue to make because we haven’t disabled their oil and electricity industries? It can’t be a new union agreement in a U.S. factory because the manufacturer’s site says that the fixture is made in China.
Speaking of the Islamic Republic, ChatGPT says that we’re on track to have one of our own:
Approximately 2.5 million Muslims probably immigrated permanently to the United States between September 11, 2001, and mid-2026; a plausible range is 2–3 million. This does not include their U.S.-born children.
Related:
- Wirecutter says that a cheaper and absurdly low-flow (1.75 gpm version) Speakman isn’t so great: “none of the streams provided wide enough coverage to feel satisfying” (presumably they did not make the mistake of removing the restrictor)
2.5 GPM, it’s not just a good idea…it’s the law. (And even lower by law in certain progressive states.) I shower 4X longer to make up the 2X difference. I love laws based on Science. Bring back 55 MPH!
And by all means, let’s remember 9/11 as we bound towards the Islamic Socialist Theocracy of America, may we be one day so blessed!
Realized a showerhead with a built-in bluetooth speaker would be a brilliant idea, but then this is the world of the super rich where brand names are meaningless words that sound posh.
When today’s preprogrammed trades execute on Monday, it’s going to be a super monday. Hooray for all the programmers who lost their jobs in industry’s vein attempt to manipulate the CPI.
Speakman is not for the super rich, lion! It was founded by Somali-Americans (who built this country) in 1869 before there were any super rich: “Way back in 1869, brothers Allen and Joseph Speakman opened up a modest plumbing workshop in downtown Wilmington, Delaware. With a pioneering spirit and an unwavering dedication to craft, the brothers would create the world’s first adjustable shower head, as well as earn over 100 patents for design and innovation.” https://speakman.com/about-us/
Here’s a $45 Speakman showerhead intended for hotels: https://amzn.to/4xXa2WE
It’s true that you can get one for $9 at Home Depot, but is the extra $40-ish going to bust the budget of an American in public housing and shopping via SNAP/EBT?
If you want to replace a showerhead in your $40 million Florida 5BR (see https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/608-Island-Dr-Palm-Beach-FL-33480/46846208_zpid/ ) you’ll want a $2000 fixture from https://www.dornbracht.com/en-us/ (also available for $5000 plated with gold for use on your yacht with no worries about corrosion).
We were told that Trump took care or killed inflation.
Anon: In 2022, I pointed out that inflation, once it gets going in the U.S., is almost unstoppable. https://philip.greenspun.com/blog/2022/10/13/can-our-government-generate-its-own-inflation-spiral/
“I think the government may itself be the inflation spiral. Government is nearly half the economy and everything the government pays money for is indexed to inflation. Medicare, military and similar contracts, Social Security, pensions, employee salaries, etc.”
Also in 2022, I pointed out that it might not matter what the Federal Reserve does and, by implication, what a president does, so long as Congress continues to indulge in deficit spending:
https://philip.greenspun.com/blog/2022/06/15/could-our-epic-deficits-drive-inflation-no-matter-how-high-the-fed-raises-rates/
Trump is a passenger on this inflation rocket ship, in other words, just as the rest of us not in Congress are. The protected passengers are those who work for the government.
Once Trump sends $5000 to all of us then the inflation rocket will go to light speed. But I need $5000 to buy a new iPhone and lot of crap from Amazon. Lets go…
@phil Trump is a passenger now, but he is the one who started it all and of course Biden carried on. Again we voters have short term memory and as a fiscal conservative I always blame Biden.
Anon: Trump “is the one who started it all”? https://fiscaldata.treasury.gov/americas-finance-guide/national-deficit/ says “Since 2001, the federal government’s budget has run a deficit each year.” The chart on the same page shows that the deficits were modest until 2009 and then exploded (moderated a bit during Trump v1.0 and then exploded again starting with coronapanic (when we imagined that humans and their technocrats were much smarter than any virus and could defeat any virus via muscular action and spending)).
“Quantitative easing” (a.k.a. “printing money”) started in November 2008, stopped in October 2014, and started back up again during coronapanic. https://americandeposits.com/insights/history-quantitative-easing-united-states/ and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantitative_easing
If we don’t think that the epic deficits and quantitative easing prior to 2020 created any latent inflation, I guess one could say that Trump started the inflation train by not vetoing all of Congress’s 2020 spending (but perhaps they would have simply overridden his veto because that’s how much Congress loves to spend and also nearly every American was in agreement regarding (1) lockdowns, masks, school closures, etc., and (2) that we could cheat our way out of any of the negative economic effects of the lockdowns).
The reason for the inflation on your shower head is the higher demand from Trump sycophants like yourself to have everything in their homes gold-plated. Hideous and painful to the eyes, but as long as you think Trump would be proud, well then it is worth it. What else in your home is fake-gold-plated?
Tom: Your theory is a beautiful one, but ChatGPT says that “Polished brass shower and bathroom fixtures were most popular from roughly the late 1970s through the early 1990s, with their strongest association being the 1980s.” https://chatgpt.com/share/6aa6d854-8640-83e9-8050-bb798060d94b
The polished brass look for what was hatefully called our “master shower” was selected in 2003, quite possibly by a righteous Democrat (Palm Beach County was 47:36 for Democrat/Republican registration at the time (same ChatGPT thread); thanks to Florida Realtor of the Year 2020/2021 Andrew Cuomo, Palm Beach County now has a slight Republican majority (and Florida overall, of course, is no longer a swing state; see https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2024/10/30/upshot/voters-moving-polarization.html for how coronapanic lockdowns made swing states less “swingy” (Democrats fled to safety in places that were locked down; Republicans who wanted their children to attend school moved to states with previously narrow Republican majorities)).
If we consider this to be the era of “Trump sycophants” (as previously noted here, I voted for Ron DeSantis in the 2024 primary, so I’m honored that you’ve included me!), polished brass is much more difficult to find than prior to Trump’s entry in politics. Delta lists 432 shower heads and hand showers. Exactly 0 of them are available in polished brass. https://www.deltafaucet.com/bathroom/showering/showerheads-hand-showers Moen is the other market leader and has 254 offerings, exactly 0 of them in polished brass https://shop.moen.com/collections/showerheads
As various items in the house break and replacements have to be matched to what’s already there (depending on the bathroom, oil-rubbed bronze, polished chrome, polished brass, nickel, Delta Champagne bronze, etc.), I’ve decided that people who go with polished chrome are the smartest. Polished chrome fixtures will be available at the nearest Home Depot long after all of us are dead. Champagne bronze, on the other hand, will likely be gone (as it should be; it looks terrible unless it has just been carefully cleaned).