Pratica di Shadowing: Why is everything getting so expensive? - Impara a parlare inglese con i video
Creazione lezione...
1
on my way to the grocery store mentally preparing myself for the sticker shock here
2
we are wish me luck got my diapers
3
it might be something else for you for me it's diapers is really where
4
like i notice inflation the most one of the things that's interesting about this particular period of inflation
5
that we're in is this is a worldwide phenomenon hi folks my question is about inflation.
6
What is the real cause?
7
Is it just COVID or we have others to blame?
8
Thank you.
9
Diapers in the U .S., food in Ghana, and home prices in India.
10
What actually caused all this inflation?
11
And is there something we can do about it?
12
If you watch cable news in the U .S., you will see one explanation for inflation that gets a lot of attention.
13
There's still too much money chasing too few goods.
14
Too much money chasing too few goods.
15
Say I have a car dealership.
16
Say we're in a global pandemic.
17
Factories are shutting down periodically and I'm just not able to keep as many cars on my lot.
18
My inventory is low.
19
But at the same time, I have customers willing to spend money on my cars.
20
My inventory starts to dwindle and now there's more customers than there are cars.
21
So I can just increase the price.
22
Too much money chasing too few goods.
23
Economists like this guy, Larry Summers, he's been sounding the alarm bell about this kind of inflation from the beginning.
24
I am much more worried that we'll have inflation.
25
This is the least responsible macroeconomic policies we've had in the last 40 years.
26
He is talking about those pandemic relief checks.
27
Before we can figure out if Larry Summers is right,
28
We need to take a closer look at exactly how inflation is measured in the first place.
29
Once a month, the U .S.
30
Bureau of Labor Statistics puts together what it calls a market basket.
31
These data are specific to the U .S., but you can find similar numbers around the world.
32
The BLS looks at the prices for different goods and services like housing, electricity, apparel, prescription drugs, bakery products, dairy.
33
They look at the price we're paying this month
34
and then compare it to the price for same good or service last month or last year.
35
Then they calculate a single percentage that captures all of that change.
36
And that's the Consumer Price Index, or CPI.
37
And it's true, the Consumer Price Index has been rising steadily for the past couple of years.
38
Here's when those stimulus checks went out.
39
But now let's take a closer look at some of the specific goods and services that make up the CPI.
40
Some things are way more expensive than this time last year.
41
Like fuel oil, airline fares, gas, baked goods, dairy products.
42
But there is some stuff that's held fairly steady.
43
In a normal healthy economy, the Federal Reserve expects for inflation to be about 2 % a year.
44
And for stuff like clothing, prescription drugs, and education, prices are only slightly above that 2 % mark.
45
For used cars and trucks, gasoline and communication, that's your phone plan, internet, streaming, prices are actually lower than this time last year.
46
It seems a bit more complicated than simply people have too much money.
47
If that were the only problem, wouldn't everything be more expensive?
48
So unfortunately for me, the Bureau of Labor Statistics doesn't actually track the price of diapers as part of the CPI.
49
But I did find a private research firm, Nielsen IQ, that does.
50
So Nielsen looks at something called the unit price.
51
Basically they take the box of diapers, divide it by how many diapers are in the box, and that gives you the unit price.
52
They get a bunch of different brands and then come up with this average.
53
So in 2019, the average unit price for diapers was 16 .1 cents.
54
If prices had gone up at that expected 2 % annual inflation rate, January of 2023 would have seen me paying 17 .4 cents per diaper.
55
But of course, that's not what the last few years have looked like.
56
If the price of diapers had increased at the same rate as the CPI, I would be paying 19 cents per diaper in January of 2023.
57
But no, no, no, no, I am currently paying 21 cents per diaper, an increase of over 30%.
58
So why is it that the price of diapers is rising so much faster than the price of all these other goods?
59
You can think of the cost of a business in a couple of ways, right?
60
There's the wages that you pay for workers.
61
There are investments in capital, in the machinery itself.
62
And all of that adds up to the cost of production.
63
And then there's the cost that you actually sell the good at.
64
And the difference between those two costs are called a markup.
65
One of the things that makes it difficult to report on inflation is that reporters and consumers,
66
we don't know how much it costs companies to pay their workers.
67
We don't know how much it costs them to import the materials that they need.
68
But we can guess.
69
Take labor costs, for example.
70
We know that from 2019 to 2023, the average hourly wage for someone working in manufacturing rose by about 17%.
71
Now, that is faster than what you would expect under normal 2 % annual inflation.
72
But when you consider the fact that corporations have successfully kept wages
73
so low in the years leading up to that point that they were actually declining relative to inflation,
74
this recent bump starts to look more like a kind of return to normalcy.
75
Okay, but what about the cost of materials?
76
I went to the Pampers website and looked at what goes into making a diaper.
77
It turns out this stuff is made out of wood
78
and these are all plastics which are made by refining petroleum in slightly different ways.
79
According to the Federal Reserve's producer price index, the average price for both of these materials, wood pulp and plastic products,
80
has risen significantly over the past five years, but both of these rising input costs still don't completely explain the price hike in diapers.
81
One of the reasons I really wanted to talk to Rakeen is
82
that she and her colleagues have listened to hundreds and hundreds of hours of earnings calls.
83
What we found is big corporations who are jacking up prices beyond what their production costs would justify.
84
These are some transcripts of those earnings calls that Rakeen and her colleagues have been listening to.
85
The CEO of Hostess Brands, for example, says of these price hikes, consumers get used to it.
86
When all prices go up, it helps.
87
A Tyson Foods executive claimed that price increases for beef more than offset the higher costs.
88
Visa's CEO says that, historically, inflation has been a positive for us.
89
All three of these corporations experienced record profits over the past three years.
90
But what they did with those profits is instructive.
91
They paid that money out to their shareholders and raised prices for the rest of us.
92
So we have our three theories for this current moment of inflation.
93
Too much money floating around, supply shocks, and massive markups.
94
Unfortunately, it's probably going to be months
95
or maybe even years before we have all of the data necessary to figure out
96
which one of these three explanations holds the most weight.
97
But there are still things we can do to help bring prices down.
98
When we think of inflation in a really singular way,
99
I think that really limits the vast panoply of tools that we actually have to fight this problem.
100
Let's start with a tool that the Federal Reserve has already busted out, raising interest rates.
101
The way that works is it makes it more expensive for companies to borrow money,
102
which makes it harder for them to invest in new projects and hire new people.
103
So far, the Fed has raised interest rates eight times, and the unemployment rate has stayed pretty low.
104
But that could change if the Fed keeps raising rates.
105
The last time inflation got super high, back in the early 80s, the Fed did huge interest rate hikes, and inflation did go down.
106
But look what happened to unemployment.
107
It shot way up.
108
By 1982, 1 in 10 people were out of work.
109
In the last month of 2022, prices were starting to come down in some key areas.
110
Dairy, fruits and veggies, airline fares.
111
Prices for these two items, gasoline and fuel oil, are way down.
112
And the reason likely has very little to do with raising interest rates.
113
Over the past 12 months, President Biden released millions of barrels of oil from the U .S.
114
emergency stockpile, which increased global supply and drove down the price.
115
There's precedent for doing this in other areas of the economy.
116
In 1939, U .S.
117
President Franklin Roosevelt asked
118
Congress for nearly $900 million to help the airline industry quadruple their output.
119
Ships, planes, tanks, guns.
120
That is our purpose and our pledge.
121
Something Rakeen told me about diapers got me thinking about a third way we might start bringing prices down.
122
Turns out that somewhere between 70 % and 80 % of all the diapers produced in the U .S.
123
are made by two companies.
124
This honestly threw me a little bit, but then I went back and looked at some of that footage that I shot in the grocery store.
125
Loves, Pampers, Ninjamas — those are all made by Procter & Gamble.
126
Huggies, Pull -Ups, Good Nights — all made by Kimberly Clark.
127
So while it looks like parents have a lot of choices in the diaper aisle, we actually don't.
128
Policymakers have allowed really rampant deregulation that has facilitated these companies having
129
so much power in a way that they can jack up prices without any cost to them.
130
That supply dial and that corporate power dial, we've let them get dusty.
131
We do not, and we never did, have to throw workers under the bus in order to bring down prices.
132
I'll see you next time.
📺 Stesso Canale
B21
Sen. Murphy vs. Trump's corruption | Today, Explained
Daily ConversationWorking Adults
B21
White, pink, and brown noise, explained #shorts
Daily ConversationWorking Adults
B26
Five things you need to know for the 2026 midterms | America, Actually
Daily ConversationWorking Adults
B24
Why are weddings so damn expensive?
Daily ConversationWorking Adults
B21
Are headphones destroying our hearing?
Daily ConversationWorking Adults
B21
How to be less neurotic | The Gray Area
Daily ConversationUniversity StudentsWorking Adults
B22
We’re already using AI more than we realize
Daily ConversationWorking Adults
B21
The Ticketmaster monopoly is over, now what?
Daily ConversationWorking Adults
B22
The biggest peach myth in America
Daily ConversationWorking Adults
B28
How to solve problems like a designer
Daily ConversationWorking Adults
B22
The origin of the '80s aesthetic
Daily ConversationWorking Adults
B217
Why “Buy one, get one free” isn’t a great deal
Daily ConversationWorking Adults
B22
How F1 drivers survive their own cars
Daily ConversationWorking Adults
B210
Why 350°F is the magic number for baking
Daily ConversationWorking Adults
B26
How did pink become a girly color?
Daily ConversationWorking Adults
B22
The real reason Boeing's new plane crashed twice
Daily ConversationWorking Adults
B21
Food waste is the world's dumbest problem
Business EnglishDaily ConversationUniversity Students
B21
Why AI art struggles with hands
Daily ConversationWorking Adults
B22
How the rich avoid paying taxes
Business EnglishDaily ConversationUniversity Students
B22
How Vladimir Putin won Republicans' approval
Daily ConversationWorking Adults
✨ Video consigliato
B21
111 frasi
🚨 WHY YOU ARE GETTING POORER - Cost Of Living Crisis Accelerates
Daily ConversationWorking Adults
B22
20 frasi
Is the AI Boom Just Another Bubble?
Daily ConversationWorking Adults
B22
172 frasi
The fight over the Federal Reserve
Daily ConversationWorking Adults
B21
26 frasi
What If Inflation Goes Negative? Deflation Explained
Daily ConversationWorking Adults
B23
258 frasi
The Inflation Problem... It's Worse Than You Think
Business EnglishDaily ConversationUniversity Students
B23
10 frasi
The Heroes We Need: Adorable Twins Totally Fed Up with Inflation When Trying to Buy Ice Cream
Daily ConversationWorking Adults
B21
407 frasi
are you still watching?
Daily ConversationWorking Adults
B21
189 frasi
JD Vance On The US Economy, Trump Administration’s Handling Of Epstein Files | The View
Daily ConversationWorking Adults
B21
276 frasi
Don't sleep on the "no buy" trend
Daily ConversationWorking Adults
B23
108 frasi
Vietnam’s Insane Economic Boom Explained
Daily ConversationUniversity StudentsWorking Adults
Vocabolario e note di pronuncia per questa lezione
Questa lezione di conversazione si basa sul video “Why is everything getting so expensive?”. Le parole che ritornano più spesso: price, inflation, diaper, cost, rate. Questo video contiene 124 frasi e 1663 parole da ripetere con lo shadowing. Il parlato dura 9:33. Chi parla ha un ritmo naturale di circa 174 parole al minuto, vicino a una conversazione quotidiana. Il 84% delle parole rientra nelle 3.000 più comuni dell’inglese; conviene studiare le altre prima di iniziare.
Vocaboli chiave di questo video
15 parole del video che vale la pena imparare, con pronuncia e significato:
| Parola | Pronuncia | Significato |
|---|---|---|
| inflation sostantivo | /ɪnˈfleɪ.ʃən/ | inflazione |
| chase verbo | /t͡ʃeɪs/ | inseguire, cacciare |
| wage sostantivo | /weɪd͡ʒ/ | salario, paga |
| worker sostantivo | /ˈwɝ.kɚ/ | lavoratore, operaio |
| dairy sostantivo | /ˈdɛə.ɹi/ | latticini |
| airline sostantivo | /ˈɛɹˌlaɪn/ | linea aerea, compagnia aerea |
| hike sostantivo | /haɪk/ | camminata, passeggiata |
| shock sostantivo | /ʃɔk/ | trauma, trauma emotivo |
| explanation sostantivo | /ˌɛkspləˈneɪʃən/ | spiegazione, esplicazione |
| earnings sostantivo | guadagno | |
| unemployment sostantivo | /ʌn.ɪmˈplɔɪ.mənt/ | disoccupazione, inoccupazione |
| inventory sostantivo | /ˈɪn.vən.tɹi/ | scorta |
| prescription sostantivo | /pɹəˈskɹɪp.ʃən/ | ricetta, prescrizione |
| colleague sostantivo | /ˈkɒliːɡ/ | collega |
| fare sostantivo | /ˈfɛə/ | tariffa, prezzo |
I phrasal verb che sentirai
| Parola | Pronuncia | Significato |
|---|---|---|
| figure out verbo | scoprire, rendersi conto | |
| turn out verbo | risultare | |
| come up with verbo | ideare, escogitare | |
| go back verbo | tornare | |
| go out verbo | uscire, andare fuori | |
| go up verbo | salire | |
| make up verbo | /ˌmeɪk ˈʌp/ | comporsi |
| put together verbo | assemblare, montare |
La grammatica di questo video
Le strutture che chi parla usa di più, con le parole esatte del video:
| Struttura | Nel video |
|---|---|
| Present perfect continuous have/has been + -ing — un’azione iniziata prima e ancora in corso | he's been sounding · has been rising · have been listening |
| Present perfect have/has + participio passato — un’azione passata che conta ancora adesso | we've had · have looked · has risen |
| Forma passiva be + participio passato — conta ciò che accade, non chi lo fa | is measured · are called · is made |
Pronuncia a cui fare attenzione
Chi parla usa 13 contrazioni e forme ridotte, come don't, we're, we've. Pronunciale nella forma breve, così come le senti.
- I suoni “sh” e “zh”: inflation /ɪnˈfleɪ.ʃən/, shock /ʃɔk/, explanation /ˌɛkspləˈneɪʃən/, prescription /pɹəˈskɹɪp.ʃən/, capture /ˈkæp.(t)ʃɚ/
- Parole lunghe — attenzione all’accento: explanation /ˌɛkspləˈneɪʃən/, unemployment /ʌn.ɪmˈplɔɪ.mənt/, complicated /ˈkɑm.plɪˌkeɪ.tɪd/, successfully /səkˈsɛs.fə.li/, electricity /ɪˌlɛkˈtɹɪsɪti/
I suoni difficili per chi parla italiano:
- /h/ — va soffiata, non è muta: hike /haɪk/, hire /ˈhaɪɹ/, historically /hɪˈstɔɹɪkli/, shareholder /ˈʃɛəˌhəʊl.də(ɹ)/
- Consonante finale — senza aggiungere una vocale dopo: chase /t͡ʃeɪs/, wage /weɪd͡ʒ/, hike /haɪk/, shock /ʃɔk/, unemployment /ʌn.ɪmˈplɔɪ.mənt/
- /æ/ — più aperta della “e”: gasoline /ˈɡæs.ə.liːn/, vast /væst/, capture /ˈkæp.(t)ʃɚ/, barrel /ˈbæɹəl/, basket /ˈbæskɪt/
Come esercitarsi con questo video
- Ascolta tutto il video una volta senza parlare e annota le parole che non conosci.
- Inizia a velocità 0,75×, fai shadowing frase per frase e torna alla velocità normale quando diventa facile.
- Registrati e confronta con l’originale, facendo attenzione a parole come inflation, chase, wage.
Cos'è la tecnica dello Shadowing?
Shadowing è una tecnica di apprendimento delle lingue supportata da studi scientifici, originariamente sviluppata per la formazione dei traduttori professionisti e resa popolare dal poliglotta Dr. Alexander Arguelles. Il metodo è semplice ma potente: ascolti un audio in inglese di madrelingua e lo ripeti immediatamente ad alta voce — come un'ombra che segue il parlante con un ritardo di solo 1–2 secondi. A differenza dell'ascolto passivo o degli esercizi di grammatica, lo shadowing costringe il tuo cervello e i muscoli della bocca a elaborare e riprodurre simultaneamente i modelli di discorso reale. La ricerca dimostra che migliora significativamente la precisione della pronuncia, l'intonazione, il ritmo, il discorso connesso, la comprensione dell'ascolto e la fluidità del parlato — rendendolo uno dei metodi più efficaci per la preparazione alla prova di speaking dell'IELTS e per la comunicazione reale in inglese.