I love picking up packages and seeing 90 grams, 450 grams etc. That's how you really know that the quarterly doubling prices and shrinkflation go hand in hand :3

luckily you also get less of them for the increased price

And hey, we're also way more likely to get sick from the products, and then we can pay even more at the hospital (if they're still open in rural American in a couple of years). Capitalism at work, folks.

Housing, food, energy, education, and vehicles have all massively accelerated in cost while wages stay the same. We're plummeting toward a crash in the US.

I was told im not spending more. So I guess im not?

Edit: 2.79 for a small fry btw

I've been getting ludicrously short shelf life on some produce in the past year or so. Get a bag of carrots Thursday after work, there's mold by Saturday. I don't think that was common three years ago.

Don't forget the shrinkflation. Many, many, many products are now smaller or lesser in quantity than they used to be.

Sam's club has sold me rotten meat twice so far this year

Akchually according to this chart you're better off now, so stop complaining, you're fine. /s

And they asked for a tip at the self-checkout station!

Grocery value didn't go up. Real wages went down. We should measure inflation based on cost-of-living.

Groceries don't really get more expensive, because the methods for producing food don't really get less efficient over time; if anything, it's more efficient. So there's no real reason for them to become more expensive.

Instead, wages declined. I've already commented many times that the labor market is a free market, that means it's regulated by Supply and Demand. I.e., if prices for labor go down, as we can observe, then that can be interpreted such that supply of labor went up (women go to work too, offshoring labor to other countries, immigrants, ...) or that demand for labor went down (automation, end of growth, ...).

I honestly think that both cases are difficult, where the supply of labor could be a bit reduced by kicking out immigrants and home-shoring labor (and also, to a lesser extent, making it more difficult for women to work), which btw some advisers to trump are seemingly trying to do, but my honest opinion is that it won't bring wages up to how they were in the 1960s. Demand for labor is shrinking too, due to the end of growth and now AI and other automation techniques. I guess we'll have to face that.

edit: just to offer an optimistic outlook, i think that consumerism and therefore demand for consumer products could be stimulated by simply giving handouts to people. most people will spend most of the handouts immediately, and that stimulates consumerism. and that in turn stimulates the economy.

Y'all remember how big rice crispy treats used to be?

I’m glad that I picked up cooking during Covid. I don’t really eat out anymore or buy junk food. So I just have to deal with higher grocery prices… to supplement the rich.

Like 4/5ths of the average American diet used to be canned or frozen, so I kind of don't agree.

Fun Fact, the heir to the Swanson brand is Tucker Carlson, a Fox News show host so bad that his false statements have gotten the network sued on multiple occasions and the defense was that his statements fall under fair use due to being so absurd that no reasonable person would believe them. He actually started the Hydroxychloroquine trend during the pandemic by bringing on a non-doctor to promote the drug with a fake study.

Millions if not billions of dollars were wasted on the drugs distribution and more and more studies when it was effectively useless or in many cases harmful.

Sorry. Went a bit off topic there just now, lol.

I want to emphasize that insurance does not function to GRANT healthcare but to DENY it. Doctors grant healthcare as providers. When they prescribe it, they've granted it. Then insurance steps in and says, "wait a minute." Their only function is to deny medical care. Not pay for it - the patient does that through premiums etc. To deny it. Why do we need a healthcare DENIAL system?

The answer for why corporations need private insurance denials, is because of Hot Coffee, Erin Brokovich - we could class action sue over the bad and contaminated products companies sell us, bc it would be able to be detected. Flint, MI, was caught by testing a kid on Medicare - because they have access to healthcare. The FDA, USDA, etc should actually pay for Medicare for all to GUARANTEE their work in making sure products are safe imo. That includes these shit ass groceries without safety checks. Why should I have to pay for the government's failure to do their job? They should guarentee it and track it so they can do their jobs.