What is this? The formatting of this article is horrendous, the writing style follows common AI output (read: slop), often to the point of being nonsensical, and the citations are questionable at best.

For example, they never actually state WHAT their basic needs are - despite it being the crux of their article and referencing a consumer's "basket" 18 times, they never state what goods they are comparing!

They cite bizarre data like linking to a CSV of "their" OECD, then utilize it to rattle off a number of stats that don't correlate with each other. The charts don't look right either.

The website is drowning in banner ads - despite being a .org TLD - and looks so sloppy that a high schooler could make a more coherent and convincing report, despite being written by "(name) Economic & Pricing Investigator | Content Reviewed by CFA (name)".

This is frankly trash, and any valuable insight is impossible to distinguish against the backdrop of sloppy garbage. We should be posting higher quality articles than this.