Hacker News Reader

Comment by dukeofdoom | Hacker News Reader

Yeah making it way more expensive and causing inflation. Yesterday my local grocery had a $29 bag of coffee on clearance... regular $39. If this continues it will transform politics as well.

View on HN

the covid-era money printing is one of the biggest causes of today's inflation (but granted there are a few more). This is like high-school level econ here.

Agreed, it was a choice between a depression or inflation so we printed. It is also driven by industry consolidation leading to price gouging as there is no longer effective market competition.

Agreed, though there was a perfect target sitting right in the middle.

Not that I am blaming anyone, I think it was handled pretty well. It seems to me that people fail to realize it's only an easily balanced equation when looking at it historically and a shit show looking forward.

A significant amount of the covid stimulus going to grift and fraud was always the inevitable outcome for that administration. They explicitly removed any auditing provisions from the bill before it passed.

Whenever I see “high-school level Econ” being cited, I wonder if Econ is even taught in most American high schools, it certainly wasn’t in mine.

from the following link (Council for Economic Education), there are 28 states requiring students to take a course in economics to graduate.

https://www.councilforeconed.org/policy-advocacy/survey-of-t...

https://www.forbes.com/sites/lizfrazierpeck/2024/04/01/2024-...

The phrase should be read as "oversimplified Econ". If it were just about the money supply, increasing interest rates, which reduces money supply by suppressing loans, as well as the end to the money handouts during the shutdown, would have been enough to take care of it. But there's also market concentration which has allowed big players to raise prices a lot more than their costs have been raised, increasing their profits.

That, and record corporate profiteering.

Silly outlier anecdote. There's a $500k Rolls Royce too, doesn't mean I can't find $5/lb of coffee at Costco or that my functional car isn't $6k.

Which one is $5/lb?

https://www.costco.ca/coffee-tea.html?sortBy=item_location_p...

I'm no expert on shit coffee. But even Folgers is $6.3 lb. And is Folgers even 100% real coffee?

It tastes like it was extracted once before and freeze dried and something added to it.

Plus Costco might be subsidizing their coffee the way they do their rotisserie chicken.

https://www.costco.com/CatalogSearch?dept=All&keyword=coffee

Everything I see for US costco is roughly 5$/lb

Good coffee is 20$/lb. That was largely true before covid and "inflation". Most actual premium stuff has not increased in price much, as compared to the """premium""" lines of household brands which HAVE increased in price

Hank Green runs https://good.store/collections/all-coffee which is specialty/premium sourced coffee, with ethical business management where the coffee growers get to own and be involved with more of the process.

They sell 5 pounds of beans for $60

It's not bad coffee like Folgers. Sure, r/coffee connoisseurs that only buy $20 beans, $500 grinders, and $500 espresso machines won't drink the Costco stuff, but for the average coffee enjoyer they're decent quality. I doubt they're subsidized since you'll also find $5 pounds at Trader Joe's.

Rising temperatures lead to lower coffee yields. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/mar/09/rising-t...

And just wait until you hear about chocolate.

(The truth is the cost probably needs to rise to handle humane labor conditions, but supply shock is also an issue.)

"The researchers found that between 1980 and 2020, growing regions were more prone to experiencing too-cold temperatures. “The current climate, however, is characterised by too-hot conditions in every region,” they found, adding that “the vast majority of coffee regions never experience too-cold growing season temperatures”.

Article claims that between 2021 and 2023 (a span of 3 years) these regions experienced "Too-hot conditions", prior it was too cold.

Ideal regions have climate similar to Hawaii, where it fluctuates between 16 and 28 degrees celsius, all year round.

Assuming I take the articles seriously:

Using your last 3 data points to make sweeping projections, when they counter the previous year's data doesn't seem like very good science.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com