Divemedic

Inflation vs. Price Increase

There is a difference between price increases and inflation. With a price increase, the commodity that you want to purchase becomes more expensive. This is usually due to supply and demand forces that change the market price for that commodity. With inflation, all commodities cost more in the currency that has been inflated. This is also caused by supply and demand forces, but in this case those forces are acting upon the currency. The supply of currency is up, so it becomes worth less. At a certain point, this causes demand for that currency to drop, further exacerbating the inflation.

This is important when we discuss what commenter elrod had to say about ammo prices:

As for ammo, especially War Shots, we’ll never see pre-Covid prices again (I need a time machine….) 

He’s right. Ammo prices have been rising. Small arms ammunition prices shot up 157% from 2000 to 2022, a period in which price increases caused by inflation climbed by 170%, meaning that in terms of other goods and services, ammo is cheaper now than it was in 2000. To illustrate the impact of rising prices, a box of 20 .223 caliber rifle rounds cost about $12 in the year 2000. Today, the same ammunition costs more than $30.

My very first handgun that I bought was a Smith and Wesson Model 59. (I’m still sorry I sold that gun) Since 9mm was not yet a popular cartridge in 1987, the ammo for it wasn’t as cheap as other calibers. I remember paying $7.50 for a box of 9mm ball. Two years later, I bought a S&W 4506 when they first came out, and was paying $8 per box of UMC .45 ball.

The price increases of ammo that were brought about by COVID were due to a supply issue created by the closing of ports, factories, and shipping facilities as a part of governments shutting down portions of the economy, and were exacerbated by a huge increase in demand that was brought about by panic buying of ammo in light of the George Floyd/Antifa/BLM civil disturbances. The double whammy of supply reduction and demand increase conspired to cause a shortage, which drove up ammo and firearms prices.

That issue has largely been corrected, and the supply issue has largely returned to normal for the mainstream cartridges. There are still shortages of off track ammo like revolver ammo, 10mm, and other calibers that are now short in supply because manufacturers are concentrating on the mainstream ammo supply. As that continues to stabilize, the sidestream ammo market prices will come down a bit.

However, I don’t think that ammo prices will ever return to where they were in January of 2020, when I was buying 9mm for $7 per box (less than I was paying in the 1980s!).

That is why I do not think the elevated ammo prices that we are seeing now have anything to do with the COVID shutdown. The prices we see now are the new floor. Thanks to the inflationary pressures of Trump and Biden (and the uniparty) running the government printing presses, the dollar is worth less. That means that the prices of everything that is sold for dollars will be higher in terms of dollar cost. That is, the new prices for ammo are caused by inflation.

In February of 2019, there were 15.45 trillion dollars in existence in the entire world. By July of 2022, there were 21.73 trillion dollars in existence- a whopping 40% increase in supply in only 2.3 years.

We know that there were less goods and services available, but there were 40 percent more dollars chasing that reduced amount of goods and services. That caused inflation. The United States is in the midst of a period of historic inflation. The average price of goods and services was up a multi-decade high of 9.1% year over year in June 2022. 

Since that peak in July of 2022, the Fed has taken steps to reduce the money supply, and we now have somewhere around $20.6 trillion in circulation. We are never going to get back to $16 trillion. It isn’t possible without collapsing this house of cards our economy is built upon.

So for that reason, we are never going to see prices like February of 2020 again. Those days are gone. Enjoy your time paying $10 per 50 round box of 9mm. It will cost more as we print more money. There will come a time when we look back wistfully at $10 ammo boxes.

By Divemedic, ago

Teaching

Sometimes when you are teaching, you have to simplify a problem so that students can understand the concepts involved. I will explain. When I was a teacher, I was trying to explain to my Honors Class (I think chemistry, might have been physics. It’s been awhile) how to do a unit conversion using a method called dimensional analysis. It’s a pretty common way of solving equations that is used in the physical sciences.

I first learned the dimensional analysis when I was in the Navy at NucField A school and at Nuclear Power School. It’s handy for solving a lot of things. Dimensional analysis is a method for solving various problems that, once mastered, allows for the rapid solution to unit conversions, various physical problems (like Ohm’s law), medication dosage calculations, and more. It reduces calculation errors and is a very handy skill to have. I use this method all the time to calculate drug dosages, and used it as a firefighter to calculate hose pressures and other useful numbers.

I was teaching it to my students by giving the students a list of things I wanted converted from one item to another. The worksheet that I gave them was a list of problems that were easy to solve, but included the following instruction:

Show all of your work, including the proper setup of the dimensional analysis method. Your work is part of your answer, and any problem that does not include the showing of your work in the proper format will be marked as incorrect and will receive no credit.

The questions were things like:

  • Convert a $5 bill to nickels
  • How many toes would 22 people have?
  • How many legs would 123 ants have? (they each have 8 legs)
  • etc

So one of my students answered:

  • 100
  • 220
  • 984

And promptly got a zero for a grade. Yes, the math was correct, but I wasn’t looking for the mathematical solution, but a solution that showed me that he had mastered the method of dimensional analysis. Anyone with fourth grade understanding of arithmetic can tell you that 22 people have 220 toes. I knew that they could do simple math, because it was a requirement to have already passed Algebra and Geometry as a prerequisite to even be in my class. This was an honors course where students could receive college credit at the end of the course.

It was important that they understood the concept so when we went on to more complicated problems, they would have the skills needed to solve them. It wasn’t about the math of that particular problem, it was about knowing HOW to use dimensional analysis. That way, when you get a problem that goes like:

A sample of calcium nitrate, Ca(NO3)2, with a formula weight of 164 g/mol, has 5.00 x 1027 atoms of oxygen. How many kilograms of Ca(NO3)2 are present?

The problem can be solved without too much difficulty. The easy problems were not a test of math ability, they were a means of learning a new method for applying math skills that the student already has. A “learn to walk before you try to run” sort of thing.

The child’s parent wrote me and demanded that he receive full credit because he got the correct answers. I tried pointing out the instructions and explaining the reasons behind showing your work. No go. The parent argued that “in the real world” no one cares how you got the answers, just that you ended up with the correct answers. I tried pointing out that, this being school, demonstrating that you have mastered the method is more important than getting the correct answer. The parent continued to argue and demanded that the student receive credit. I refused. They even told me that they would get a lawyer involved. I told them “good luck finding anyone that will support you not showing your work on math homework, when the instructions clearly required it.” Then I told them if lawyers were to be involved, I would be happy to give them my attorney’s number, and their attorney could call mine to arrange a meeting. They hung up on me.

So the parents went to the principal. Nope. They went all the way to the school board, to no avail. The parent finally pulled the kid out of my class and put them into a low level environmental science class.

In this case, the parent did the child no favors.

EDIT: I am editing this to give an example of how dimensional analysis works. Here is the example:

Convert 1 week into seconds:

*Terms on the top AND bottom of the equation cancel out, leaving: (1*7*24*60*60s)/1=604,800 s

By Divemedic, ago

Lessons

A father in Baltimore was beaten to death while protecting his children from a group of teenagers and adults who wanted to finish a fight that started at school. Christopher Wright was outside his home Friday when he was attacked by three teens and two adults who were looking for his fiancée’s 14-year-old son, who had gotten in a fight with another teen at school earlier in the day.

When Wright told the group that the boy was not going to come outside to fight, they told him, “’If he’s not going to fight, then you’re going to fight,” then they administered a gang beating. Wright had a seizure and began posturing, then later died of a traumatic brain injury. No charges have been filed against any of the individuals involved.

There are a few lessons to be taken from this incident:

  • Stay out of cities, especially ones that are Zone 3 or higher.
  • Carry a weapon
  • If it’s 5 on 1, it isn’t a “fair fight” anyhow.
  • Don’t “take your beating like a man” because that may mean your death or permanent disability
  • oh, and get your kids out of public schools. They have become little more than prisons containing violent criminals
  • If someone comes to your home looking for a fight, retreat inside, arm yourself, and call the cops.
  • Have good cameras recording the outside of your home
  • Did I mention avoid liberal enclave shitholes?

I also would point out that there was no description of the attackers other than “teens and adults” meaning that they are likely black.

The school in question is Brooklyn Park Middle school. It is below even Maryland’s abysmal average for schools, with 37% of students being at grade level for English, and 14% in Math.

By Divemedic, ago

Book Bans

Stories abound on so-called “book bans.” The right is pulling books from school libraries because they instruct children on how to perform sex acts upon other children or on adults. It’s a disingenuous argument. Librarians are acting all offended because a school is choosing not to carry books that are inappropriate for children. The books can still be purchased by those who choose to do so. They can still be read, are still being published. They haven’t been banned at all.

Not so with other books. It was just five years ago that the left cheered as Amazon pulled a book from its store. That book, published by Defense Distributed, was the text version of the step files required to 3D print the Liberator pistol. That book was subsequently banned by a US judge. It is no longer published. It can’t be bought. No one can read it, unless they find a bootleg copy from a site like Pirate Bay.

By Divemedic, ago