Good news I guess. But my electricity price literally doubled. My house insurance is up 30%. My gas bill is up by a lot. Have you seen the price of oreos? The $5 box at Taco Bell is my splurge and I'm trying to cut back on everything I can.
Next year food will be far higher, largely due to
- people skipping fertilizer a second year in a row
- the feed price increases from year prior will impact next years meat
- much of the cow herds have been reduced due to hay prices skyrocketing (but beef rates staying far lower, due to sell offs)
- if Ukraine doesn’t surrender, we can expect less food production and potential oil disruption to center Europe
- Russia is not likely to renew trade relationships baring a reparations for seizing assets. They produce much of the fertilizer and oil
- 10% reduction in nitrogen targets for EU countries and Canada will further reduce food production
Yeah, a drop here or there isn’t indicative of a major change in inflation. I don’t see how we can get lower general inflation in the next 3+ years. FED has said as much.
In way of an explanation, hay prices have tripled. It’s expected they’ll at least double again tin the next 12 months. That’s one of the feed for cattle. That’s a 6x expected increase to feed cattle (the largest expense). To put it in perspective, that’s likely going to mean $12-20/lb ground beef; $25-$30/lb steak in 18 months.
I don't personally think rising beef prices are an issue, though. Nobody is going to starve because they're being priced out of a steak. I will be more concerned if we eventually begin to run short of beef-alternatives, though.
No one wants to accept the push to start eating bugs. Don’t give into the WEF propaganda
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/mar/18/cows-sea...
There’s also an industry emerging, with big pushes from organizations like WEF, to normalize eating bugs [2]. Investors are getting in on this trend too [3]
1. https://www.mdpi.com/2075-4450/12/6/557
2. https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2021/07/why-we-need-to-give-i...
3. https://fortune.com/2022/05/24/war-ukraine-big-ag-insect-fee...
For comparison, it would be silly to say we shouldn't normalize eating peanuts because of the allergy risk.
At this point I'll keep an eye out but insects are such a broad and mostly unexplored category that I'm not convinced there's an unavoidable and crippling allergen risk.
From a quick search it appears eating of bugs specifically refers to the WEF push:
https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2018/07/good-grub-why-we-migh...
https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2021/07/why-we-need-to-give-i...
don’t know about the catch phrase or how it’s “anti-woke” but interesting
We don't need to eat bugs. We can just eat less meat, like our ancestors did.
> The researchers studied ten other comparable food lists from southern England and discovered a remarkably similar pattern: a modest amount of bread, a huge amount of meat, a decent but not excessive quantity of ale, and no mention of vegetables (although some probably were served).
https://www.medievalists.net/2022/04/who-was-eating-meat-in-...
Simply put, you have an animal who eats a bunch of veggies. It’s gathering the calories for you. Then when you kill it, you harvest those calories. There are other means of collecting calories (farming grains, milk & honey, etc) but for most of human history (even now) meat was necessary as it contained the calories to survive.
“The scale and proportions of these food lists strongly suggests that they were provisions for occasional grand feasts, and not general food supplies sustaining royal households on a daily basis,” says Lambert. “These were not blueprints for everyday elite diets as historians have assumed.”
“I’ve been to plenty of barbecues where friends have cooked ludicrous amounts of meat so we shouldn’t be too surprised. The guests probably ate the best bits and then leftovers might have been stewed up for later.”
Leggett adds,: “I’ve found no evidence of people eating anything like this much animal protein on a regular basis. If they were, we would find isotopic evidence of excess protein and signs of diseases like gout from the bones. But we’re just not finding that. The isotopic evidence suggests that diets in this period were much more similar across social groups than we’ve been led to believe. We should imagine a wide range of people livening up bread with small quantities of meat and cheese, or eating pottages of leeks and whole grains with a little meat thrown in.”
The researchers believe that even royals would have eaten a cereal-based diet and that these occasional feasts would have been a treat for them too.
But increase fertilizer 3-10x and fuel 3-5x and you’re going to adjust in prices. And you’re going to get a new sustainable level.
Btw when I say “sustainable” I mean market conditions, not environment. The environment can likely handle far more cattle, but it requires input (fuel, fertilizer, etc) for us to produce said cattle.
Recall, there used to be millions (probably tens of millions) of bison roaming the Americas. We basically replaced them with cattle. Cattle are constrained to a region and fed food from farms. Environmental wise, I don’t see much issue with cattle (when comparing to other pollutants)
I'm in no way anti-meat, but a lot of people have normalized eating a huge amount of meat per day at ultra low cost, and internalized this as some basic right. Natural consumption of meat is to eat meat sporadically, not 3 times per day.
I'm not questioning whether one likes meat, I do too. I'm saying you don't need it in these amounts nor should you expect it to be this cheap forever.
I'm imagining a farm household hundreds of years ago, growing their own crops and having a herd of 4 cows, killing one or two a year for lots and lots of meat.
Google says hunter-gatherers got most of their food from meat.
And are crops not unnaturally cheap with modern mechanized farms?
Not judging on the value of thaat diet though. "Natural" doesn't necessarily mean "good"
This is just an appeal to the way things were 70 years ago in the US. Much further back you had Native Americans absolutely eating tons of bison meat in the western US. Other tribes easily got fish for every meal. Others have been heavily vegetarian.
There is no “natural consumption of meat”.
Yes. As you point out the consumption of meat varies greatly across cultures.
Overconsumption of meat can lead to bodily issues as does a lack of particular plant foods. Particular meats are processed/digested in different ways, and have different pros and cons on what it does to your body and health.
So there very much is a "natural" way to consume meat that is most compatible with the capabilities and constraints of our body.
What is recommended/natural is an entirely different concept from what people actually do, which was entirely my point.
If Russia doesn't surrender. Don't put the responsibility of global food prices on the people being repressed and killed in their own homes. Do it on the aggressors and war criminals.
I’m stating what I see as facts. Russia will not surrender. The longer the Ukraine is in the war, the higher likelihood the people of Ukraine starve.
We can make an argument that they shouldn’t surrender. That’s a moral position.
I’m pointing out if we don’t figure it out within the next few months you’re not going to get the food from the region, as people are fighting over it. I don’t care who’s fault it is. We should recognize the situation so we can try to mitigate the issue.
Nobody disagrees that until it ends the situation will create further instability; but it can end with Russia giving up or surrendering as well. There is no global objective truth that Russia will not surrender; so by saying "I'm just stating facts" you're actually making a normative claim instead of a descriptive one; which can be viewed as problematic.
They are just claiming that Russian concession is much less likely than a Ukrainian one, which I think many would agree with.
If the war in Ukraine continues, we can expect less food production and potential oil disruption to center Europe.
No need to comment on how to get to this outcome, or thoughts about who will make a concession leading to a big conversation away from the main point of what you were trying to say.
Keep the if statement about exactly matters, not a secondary effect/cause.
Here’s one: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=KILAY2miQdI
Here’s another: https://m.youtube.com/c/AlexanderMercourisReal
In short, for Russia to lose would be the end of Russia. They have to be seen as hitting their objectives (they’ve hit a few so far). Ukraine is massively out gunned, but has more manpower active. That said, I don’t see an outcome where Ukraine can regain any territory and will likely only lose more. That will further embolden Russia and will keep them from surrendering at the very least.
You have picked a 1. random unpopular youtube channel (which might be good, I couldn't verify anything from it, as I couldn't find who ran it, if you know I am happy to be proved wrong) and 2. A disbarred barrister https://twitter.com/markgaleotti/status/927087181532991489?l.... There is much better information to pick than this! Any information will have a bias, and if they claim to be neutral I personally get suspicious of what that bias is.
Your assertion that you can't see anyway for Ukraine to win is based on "If Russia loses, it would be the end of Russia". Well, if Ukraine loses it will be the end of Ukraine, so I guess by your logic Russia can't win either? (TBF, everyone losing to some degree is right with war).
I won't get drawn into a discussion about how the war will go. People qualified to make a guess have been wrong and wont make prediction. Neither of us is qualified, so I will not be weighing in on this except to say that unexpected things happen all the time in conflict.
One big difference here is that Russia has nuclear weapons and Ukraine does not.
"Ukrainian forces could wipe out all of 'exhausted' Russian troops' territorial gains, retired US general says" https://www.businessinsider.com/ukraine-exhausted-russian-tr...
There was also an interesting take on the business before the war even started by Mikhail Khodarenok - ex-head ... of the Main Operational Directorate of the General Staff of the RF Armed Forces, Colonel https://nvo.ng.ru/realty/2022-02-03/3_1175_donbass.html In Russian but Google translate works well. It points out a lot of difficulties that seem to have come to pass including:
>It is also worth recalling that the mighty Stalinist NKVD and the multi-million Soviet army fought the nationalist underground in Western Ukraine for more than 10 years. And now there is an option that the whole of Ukraine can easily go into the partisans. In addition, these formations can easily begin to operate already on the territory of Russia.
which seems to be playing out just now with stuff blowing up in Crimea and Belarus.
Unfortunately this will have some bad effects for the rest of the world in terms of food supplies, but it's a price worth paying to eliminate Russia as an effective geopolitical player for years to come. Remember that it's not just about Ukraine. If the rest of the civilized world pressures Ukraine into ceding territory to Russia as part of a peace settlement then next year Russia will try to take a little slice of Poland, a little slice of Estonia, etc.
It's not such a far-fetched idea. Russia (the empire) has been falling apart since 1991 (possibly even 1917, but that's a scale that doesn't matter much for the outcome of this war).
> I believe -- and this is a personal belief here at MFAN [the channel name] -- that the United States is actively flying both F-22s and F-35s -- stealth aircraft -- over the combat area. And now, are they dropping ordnance on Russian targets? Difficult to say
There's zero indication that nuclear weapons are relevant.
80,000 casualties in 140 days is shocking and unsustainable for Russia.
If western accounts are correct, western military support is increasing the weapons imbalance, leading to greater Russian losses and fewer Ukrainian losses.
Finally, I'll point out that pundits have been calling doom for Ukraine from the start, and have all been wrong. So, the onus is on you at this point to "dive in and debate."
Or don't, and accept your downvotes lol. It's just social media.
According to the Western media they were running out of ammo in March, April, May and June. Meanwhile, with an incompetent army running out of supplies, they were apparently able to occupy 20% of Ukraine's territory.
The conclusion as far as food goes is that globally, plans should be made that do not count on any food from Ukraine, or Russia entering global markets.
I just took umbrage that OP was seemingly (and probably unintentionally) putting the blame for the situation on Ukraine and not Russia.
> "To this end, we will seek to demilitarise and denazify Ukraine, as well as bring to trial those who perpetrated numerous bloody crimes against civilians, including against citizens of the Russian Federation."
How do you demilitarize a nation by taking only 20% of it? The only way to do this would be to capture the entirety of the country.
> How do you demilitarize a nation by taking only 20% of it? The only way to do this would be to capture the entirety of the country.
Really? What if Ukraine surrenders and negotiates sovereignty over the remaining 80% of their territory while dismantling (or at least greatly reducing) the capabilities of their armed forces?
That's just one of the possibilities that comes to mind which does not involve occupying the entire territory.
On the other hand, if Russia is able to make significant advances in the coming months, and Ukraine is at a point where it cannot meaningfully defend anymore, it seems the rational choice would be to negotiate and accept a reduction in their armed forces (while maybe retaining what territories they still have under control) instead of falling for the sunken cost fallacy and trying to defend a lost position just to avoid "wasting" 8 years of NATO training.
Maxwell Taylor quoted here: https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/pdfs/ADA486290.pdf
the problem you're alluding to isn't new: political leaders aren't likely to make the clear statement of aims you want them to make (see the quote). You should consider the fact that they might not make a clear statement, but 100% could still could be the goal.
My view is that the original ground scheme of maneuver (a strike at kyiv) points to a goal of replacing the ukrainian government with a russian puppet government, essentially a "100%" or unlimited war aim.
But in the post I was replying to it was stated as a certainty rather than a possibility.
On the other hand, they only took one big city in/since February and that's only because it wasn't defended by Ukraine.
Putin won't live forever. So the goal is just containment until he's replaced by someone less aggressive.
Where is this happening? The US sent another $Billion three days ago: https://www.defense.gov/News/Releases/Release/Article/312005...
Western leaders have stopped visiting because they just did a few months ago, they don't need some official state visit merry-go-round to show support.
Also we do not "all know Ukraine is going to lose". In the real world, this is looking like a complete embarrassment for the Russian military. Hell we all knew the Taliban lost in Afghanistan in 2002 as well, and this is going much much better for Ukraine than it was for them.
I think you mean if Russia doesn't surrender. If Ukraine was to surrender, we'd have bigger problems than an increase in beef costs. I don't see any universe where Russia wins this war.
The RUSI - Royal United Services Institute - is a leading UK military institute that had boots on the ground assessing the situation. Here is their assessment. https://rusi.org/explore-our-research/publications/special-r...
"At present, however, several Russian advantages and Ukrainian weaknesses are leading to an attritional conflict that risks a protracted war, eventually favouring Russia."
And here's the companion podcast https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/a-turning-point-in-ukr...
It will tell you a lot of things, including that Ukraine's losses are far higher than the general public estimates, as Ukraine successfully hid/minimized the awareness of its losses from phase 1 of the war.
I also recommend the War on the Rocks podcast with Michael Kofman, whose assessment of the situation is also not too rosy.
I am extremely pro ukraine. But that's the reality. At the moment Russia is winning and Ukraine is losing, just very slowly.
Russia is quite ready to sell on the following conditions:
- Remove sanctions which forbid (or make it difficult) the Russian export in the first place.
- Pay in rubles (i.e. you have to "sterilize" your cache through the Moscow stock exchange) like was done with the gas export to Europe.
- Remove sanctions which forbid export to Russia. It has no interest in selling stuff to the West, if it can not buy the stuff it needs in exchange. We already can see that its export-oriented economy sectors suffer from the strong ruble.
Russia has answered to the frozen reserves by freezing financial assets owned by foreigners. Interestingly enough, both numbers are quite comparable to each other.
I doubt that Russia would prioritize food production if they win the war, considering the huge list of "enemies" they've added to their list.
Most likely, they send food production to allies and they'll attack the next neighboring country in a few years by keeping exports (Gas/food) towards "enemies" at a minimum.
I notice this price varies even at the same locations sometimes, but it's WAY up in general by a solid 50 percent in 2 years.
...
I like discussions about inflation though because everyone brings up a particular item from their own budget. For instance, have you priced Little Debbie Zebra Cake Rolls lately? Did you even know they exist? It's like a mixture of a Swiss Roll and a Zebra Cake and they are completely awesome and I'm pretty sure the government is ignoring the 50 percent inflation I've been seeing on them lately. I don't know if this is incompetence or reactionary arrogance ("We'll stick with the hexagonal cakes they serve at Quadrangle Club thank you.") but I know the whole program is broken.
Wait, nevermind you're right about that.
Not really. There's this myth that it only costs a few pennies to fill a cup with soda.
I was a manager at a Subway from 2006 to 2012, so I got to see the costs of all our food. I did the math and found it cost about 1.7 cents per ounce dispensed, so a 32 oz soda cost 54.4 cents to fill assuming no ice. The cup/lid/straw cost us about 12 cents. At the time, we charged $1.69 for the soda, giving a margin of about 60%. This margin of course went up if they used ice, but went down if they refilled it.
About 20% of revenue went to labor. I'm sure you're thinking, "But if you can make a sub in under a minute, and you pay $10/hr, shouldn't it be less?", but there's a lot of time spent not making sandwiches, such as cleaning, baking bread, and other food prep. Sure, the lettuce came pre-shredded in bags, olives and jalapenos are pre-sliced, but we had to slice the tomatoes, cucumbers, onions, and green peppers.
And then of course, there's the cost of rent and utilities, plus franchising fees. Overall, our profit margin was under 10%.
I'm sorry, what? People drink a whole litre of soda with their lunch? I don't understand this on multiple levels. Who would buy this, why would anyone sell it, and should that even be legal?
We Americans love our soda far more than our friends around the world.
I had sticker shock when I went to Italy a couple weeks ago and if I ordered a soda at a restaurant, I'd pay 3-4 euros and get a tiny 8 oz can.
In America, at a restaurant, if you order a soda, it's $2-4, and you'll usually get a 12 or 16 oz cup and get free refills.
At least I stick to the Diet/Zero-Sugar varieties so I'm keeping the calories down.
The McDonalds app is the weirdest mish-mash of modern app design with ancient CRM systems I've ever seen. It looks like they finally updated the email receipt - it used to be text-based straight from the 80s.
It will be interesting to see if locations start pulling tricks to avoid honoring the deals in the app.
This happens with things like Medium Ground Beef as well. But T-bone steaks can be quite cheap in lower income areas, and massively overpriced in more expensive parts of town.
Then again that's been true since I started paying attention to this stuff almost 20 years ago. The reported inflation rate's never felt all that close to how much stuff I buy's actually going up in price (the reported rate's consistently a lot lower than that).
HOWEVER, in the specific case of McDonalds, you have to factor in that they've spent the last few years aggressively optimizing for price discrimination. If you're poor, you use the app and physical coupons and never pay menu prices, but something closer to what the prices used to be. If you're not poor you pay menu prices and wonder when fast food stopped being cheap (it didn't, they just make you trade some time and effort to get "normal" prices now)
Experts are just spinning things to fit their idealogies. Regular folks must start evaluating how inflation is personally affecting us and make noise.
This is actually pretty similar to what pizza chains have been doing far longer and to a greater degree than other fast-food joints used to—it's long been the case that you can get 30-50% off your chain pizza order with coupons, and that there are always a bunch of coupons available to suit many common orders, such that there's rarely a reason to order anything at full menu price from a major pizza chain unless you just can't be bothered to track down any of the deals (hence, it's price discrimination, with a side of psychological manipulation to make you think the "deals" are actually bargains when they are, rather, simply not rip-offs).
As for my own experience: we usually do Arby's when we want garbage food. We can easily drop $40 there at menu prices without going nuts—or we can get all of the exact same stuff for $15 or less, with coupons (the key: lots of their coupons list, in small print, a count of times you can apply it in the same visit, so you may be able to use a single coupon for, say, "$3 sandwich + fries" to buy five of those meals at once at the coupon price). Again, these places have long had coupons, but they didn't used to constantly have lots of coupons or other deals active at once, and the difference between coupon and menu prices didn't used to be so extreme. Actually, noticing that Arby's prices had damn near doubled over just a couple years (pre-pandemic) was what prompted me to take notice of this situation, which does appear to be playing out industry-wide.
Groceries are 40% more than they were.
Utility bill is up nearly 50%.
Clothes and shoes don't seem to be more expensive, they just don't seem to go on sale anymore.
Our neighbors had a new roof installed and spend almost double what we did 3 years ago, we have nearly the same house and the same contractor did it.
Fast food has gone way up, sit-down restaurants don't seem to have changed much.
Homes in the area have went up 100% in the last two years.
We won't even talk about gas.
New Jeep Cherokee Latitude 4x4 was $21k in January 2021. The cheapest new Cherokee now is $35k. 3 years old is $25k. Seattle,WA.
2020 $51.9k
2021 $52.5k
2022 $55.3k
So, yes I can find such a car and it was quite easy. You should reconsider how likely people are to over-estimate the changes in prices compared to a systematic approach to tracking inflation like the BLS performs.
With a $38,635 starting price, the entry-level Odyssey now costs $4300 more than last year
Well that went down in price in July, and is one of the reasons inflation was flat in todays CPI.
Everything seems to be going up, but interesting that you brought home insurance up? Any particular reason why you mention it?
I guess if house prices and building material and labor costs are increasing, it makes sense that insurance would too. (Although I'm sure if everything dropped, insurance would remain the same)
Many house insurance companies give you a 10-50% new client discount, that slowly goes away year by year. The only choice is to jump ships every few years.
The problem is our laws about assignment of benefits and how insurance lawsuits get punished. So what happens is anytime any storm comes in you get swarmed with roofing companies wanting you to assign all benefits to them and they offer you a "free" roof. They then keep telling the roofing companies their previous estimate for roof was too low and they needed more money to fix the roof. At the end of the day the insurance companies end up paying double the cost of the roof because that's cheaper then the roofing company suing them, having to prove the costs they are being quoted are excessive, and if they fail they have to pay it out anyway + attorney fees.
We saw this ourselves when we had a hail storm at our house and didn't know any better. We did the AOB to a roofing company. That company never even looked at the roof. They called the insurance company, who sent an adjuster who looked at the roof. The insurance company wrote us a $15k check for a replacement roof. 3 months later (when the roofing company hadn't even looked at our roof still, let alone given us an estimate) we get a notification from the insurance company that the roofing company told the insurance company it would cost an additional $8k, and the insurance company wrote them a check.
We cancelled the roofing contract and shopped around. Got our new roof replaced within a month for $13k (we had 3 quotes from different companies, no company quoted more than $14k).
This is why insurance is going up so much in Florida, and why insurance companies are leaving the state. Last I saw, Florida leads the country in insurance litigation cases per year by a ridiculously wide margin to the 2nd highest.
And I'm not an insurance company defender or anything, but all home owners and renters in florida are all paying the price for this.
What happens is the roofing company claims to the insurance company that they had to replace more boards, they needed more nails, and a bunch of other material costs they claimed they needed. Since the policy states that the coverage warrants a replaced roof (of the same type) in this instance, the roofing company is claiming that a replacement roof costs more than the estimate and thus should be covered.
The insurance company could send another adjuster out to verify that the replacement roof costs as much as they did, but they'd have to verify how many boards are replaced (which means going without a roof until the adjuster verifies all the damaged boards), material cost for the roof, etc... That's a lot of investigation they need to do to fight a supposed excessive cost when the laws of the state make it very hard (and costly) for the insurance companies to win a denial that gets litigated.
It's not unusual for insurance companies to pay more than an adjuster's estimate though. An adjuster can't always see all the damage (they can't see behind walls, can't see under existing roof shingles, etc....) and if the policy covers fixing the damage then that means covering all costs it takes to fix that damage (minus deductible). So it's a balance between making sure insurance companies have the ability to push back against scamming of policies and consumer rights of making sure consumers get paid out what they are adaquately owed. Right now the balance in Florida is too far in the consumers favor and that's causing insurance companies to get scammed, and thus leaving the state, causing all consumers to ultimately suffer.
It's been a long time since I've had an Oreo but I cannot bring myself to pay $6.99 for a 14oz package of oreos when I can bake my own cookies for pennies.
Not quite the same as an oreo though. Target had a store brand oreo-type cookie that was IMO even better than the real thing. Used to be $1 for a 14oz package but they've since stopped selling it...
What supplier and location, out of curiosity?
[0] https://cleanenergy.org/blog/fpls-holiday-surprise-810-milli...
[1] https://www.fpl.com/content/dam/fplgp/us/en/rates/pdf/res-ju...
My electric bill has never been higher than $150, and maybe $175 this summer.
Stop putting your AC on 68 and you'll have a lower bill.
I've yet to find anyone with bills doubled, despite so many people claiming it true. But I keep asking....
More data: https://www.gulfshorebusiness.com/expect-electricity-bills-i...
The only actual stories with solid data say the increase is due to natural gas prices, which have not nearly doubled, so it'd be surprising that the end product doubled. And stories showing how unusual high heat waves have caused people to use more energy, which naturally results in a higher bill.
Also, that's completely different than inflation caused, and I doubt the higher bills would last long if that double monthly bill is true.
Also, if people were undercharged, then they owe the money. Basically they got a better deal by paying less early.
I looked through New Orleans rates. They never doubled.
I find zero cases where the electric rates doubled, which is what the person here claimed.
As far as complaints, I can find people here complaining their rates doubled, when in fact they did not. Going to another place is not much different than here.
As far as I have found, no electric company doubled rates, contrary to lots of hearsay.
We just stopped going to Taco Bell all together. It's kind of crazy. I can't find a reason to go there any longer. As a kid, they were so cheap[0], the running joke was that $20 worth of food there would kill a person. It was about properly priced -- despite being a fan of Taco Bell, their consistency between restaurants (better, today) was terrible in the 90s -- you'd get anywhere from 1/4-3/4 filled shells with random mixes of cheese-lettuce-GroundMeat ratio.
I took my kids there last weekend ... it was over $30.00 and I didn't eat. Fast food -- across the board -- has gone up. In my area, and I suspect most places, it's because they need to pay upwards of $18.00/hr to employ enough people to keep the store (and now restaurant) open. I expect a lot of automation is coming (and I hope like hell McDonald's fixes their terrible in-store ordering kiosk ... and that's one place where it's becoming increasingly expensive to avoid their app).
My grocery bill went from ~$100/trip to $250/trip if I don't do the majority of my shopping at ALDI. So I basically stopped grocery shopping anywhere other than ALDI[1] for anything ALDI carries. I only avoided it, before, because I have 4 options within 2 miles and ALDI is 6 miles away (I love ALDI).
I've started buying a lot of "the maintenance things[2]" at the dollar store (now $1.25, and the independent ones are now $1.00 - $5.00). You have to be careful with those because some items are a terrible deal there and some of the products are fscked up[3] but we've gotten lucky with a few trips -- consider that a 32oz bottle of the same shampoo was almost $8 at the other places and after purchasing a "test bottle" we bought out the rest and two other local stores in the chain. We do that when we find a good one and end up with enough to not have to think about it for a decade.
The saving grace, I guess, is that I haven't had a commute in two years and won't be getting having, again. I also replaced much of the rest of my driving with a OneWheel. I'm filling up my gas tank less than once a month when I was filling up more than once a week, before.
[0] At one point they were running $0.49 tacos -- mid-90s.
[1] While everything went up there, too, it went up less ... although the frozen pizzas that are a guilty pleasure of mine still land around $2.39 (they never go on sale for $1.99 any longer, though).
[2] Shampoo/Conditioner/Soap/etc, things like Band-Aids/Toothbrushes (they carry fancy manual toothbrushes which my kids use)
[3] I've gotten Shampoo from a well known brand that I've purchased at a grocery store which was "separated". I guess I could have called the 800 number; guessing it was counterfeit/meant for destruction and ended up back in the gray-market.
Amusingly the "Dominos Coupon pizza" has stayed constant through all this, whereas everything else around here has gone up - high enough that the difference between going to Culver's or going to the bar or an actual restaurant is basically nil again.
There IS a $5 "classic combo" that's large drink, one crispy taco, one beef burrito, chips, and a drink. Which is still way more than you can get anywhere else for $5 these days, if that's what you want to eat. While the rest of the menu is going to result in a more expensive meal than you'd get most other fast food. Although maybe I'm wrong about that, I think maybe my local McDonald's has some "combo meals" at like $13 even?!
This trend predates the current inflation.
Several major fast food chains appear to have worked out more effective price discrimination schemes that involve raising their menu prices to much higher than they used to be, then offering crazy discounts in their apps or via coupons.
It's always been possible to get significant discounts on fast food with coupons, but before they seemed to think they needed to keep their menu prices at least non-crazy or it'd hurt business. Something changed and a whole bunch of them decided they no longer needed to keep menu prices in the realm of sanity—10-to-1 this happened so fast and uniformly because one or more of the big-3 management consulting firms pushed new "best practices" across the whole industry in short order.
Now the menu prices are WTF high, but you can get 50-90%(!) discounts using the apps and coupons and eat fast food daily without ever paying anywhere near menu price.
If that's the norm I don't see how fast food will survive. Instead I'll go to the authentic taqueria next door, which used to be about double the cost for lunch (so I didn't go so often) but now it is actually cheaper and much better.
It's plenty of food, if you skip the soda it's like $3 for a small burger and fries, or a taco and a bean burrito.
I see some BK combos are within striking distance of $15. Add sales tax, easily over $1 in many locations, and there you are.
If 100% of the average consumer budget was spent on heating gas, a 600% increase of heating gas would be a 600% inflation boost.
At the end of the day, we each have our own inflation #. Some may be lower, some higher.
NYT made a calc to try and show some of this: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2022/05/08/business/econ...
(In fact, one question is "do you heat your home with oil", and a Yes answer seems to jump your score up 3% or so)
Yes the number overall is tiny - but it still means that whatever I used to spend on heating/hot water, is now 6x higher.
Though average food/fuel prices have also gone up quite a lot, so the total monthly expenses have gone up more around 20%, which is a lot more closer to actual inflation in my region.
Shop around
Best case scenario is it stops growing.
This is also a data resolution problem. Sure we measure in months, but is that a reasonable resolution? Why not days? Years? Etc.
https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/inflation-rate-mo...
OTOH, the Fed has goal of maintaining a 2% inflation target; so in the long run you can expect it to go up. For many many years before the pandemic, it failed to achieve that goal. Inflation was too low; which means job growth, wage growth, and gdp was below potential.