Retail sales in the US post their biggest gain in 3 years driven by the rise in fuel prices.

[newsguyusa@flipboard.social]

Retail sales in the US post their biggest gain in 3 years driven by the rise in fuel prices. https://www.census.gov/retail/marts/www/marts_current.pdf

[dacmot@sunny.garden]

@liquor_american maybe there a language nuance I'm not getting... How can retail sales *gains* be driven by fuel prices (increasing)? Shouldn't it be the opposite?

@newsguyusa

[fu@hostux.social]

@newsguyusa that's not how this is supposed to work

[mweiss@infosec.exchange]

@dacmot @liquor_american @newsguyusa because it's measured in gross nominal dollars, not net profit or unit counts. The number of units may be flat or even down, but the total number of dollars spent is up.

[dacmot@sunny.garden]

@mweiss thanks for the explanation. So could be a misleading positive spin; people are spending more but presumably getting less. And are they spending more out of necessity, possibly increasing debt, or are they more confident in the economy?

@liquor_american @newsguyusa

[mweiss@infosec.exchange]

@dacmot @liquor_american @newsguyusa odds are really slim about it being from increased confidence. More likely out of necessity. Energy-based inflation typically reduces elastic spending, so the underlying signal here is a suggestion that most elastic spending was already down near minima and didn't have further room to drop.