8 ms·

The Price History of Campbell's Tomato Soup

78 points by monort 6y ago

slacktide 6y ago
Damnit, now I want a grilled cheese sandwich.
- rbobby 6y ago
  And soup in a mug.
torgoguys 6y ago
Sure, it's gone up a lot since the 70s, but appears artificially static low before that. 10 cents in 1900 (from the graph) would be over $3.00 in today's money.
- frankbreetz 6y ago
  I wonder if that means we can expect the price to keep rising until it reaches $3.00. Or, maybe we will find out how efficient we got when the price levels out.
  - ec109685 6y ago
    There's nothing magical about the $3.00 price.
- paulcole 6y ago
  Good eye! It seems most of the price escalation has occurred since 10 April 1974, when the U.S. government lifted its price controls on food.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - nybble41 6y ago
    Price controls on food would explain the short interval where the price was being controlled: 1971 to 1974. What about the span from 1895 to 1970 where there were no price controls and yet the price hardly changed at all?
    - christkv 6y ago
      I would think that in the period 1895 to 1970 the relative price of the can to wage growth means it got cheaper relative to purchasing power?
lumost 6y ago
I'd be curious to see estimates of the US economy with different deflators over the last 50 years. In particular the last 20 years of campbell's price history would indicate some form of inflation that ran much faster than the CPI. A reasonable resolution the the productivity/wage gap would be that productivity simply hasn't risen very much over the last 50 years, and apparent productivity/wage gaps are due to differences in how the GDP deflator is calculated.
thesausageking 6y ago
In 1971, the US ended the convertibility of the dollar into gold and shifted the dollar to be fiat money. Many dollar-based metrics have a similar change of slope around 1971: https://wtfhappenedin1971.com/ https://wtfhappenedin1971.com/
- gruez 6y ago
  I'm surprised how often this site gets linked despite being almost entirely composed of correlation graphs[1]. If you're going to argue that the end of the gold standard is responsible for many of today's economic woes, I'm going to need more rigorous evidence than a bunch of charts with arrows on them. Speaking of which, a quick search has shown that the first charts has some flaws[2]. The use of several dozen images in lieu of substantive analysis/evidence makes is reminiscent of a gish gallop[2], which is a red flag for me. [1] cellphone and cancer, anyone? https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/925 https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/925 [2] https://economicsfromthetopdown.com/2020/01/17/debunking-the-productivity-pay-gap/ https://economicsfromthetopdown.com/2020/01/17/debunking-the... [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gish_gallop https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gish_gallop
  - p1necone 6y ago
    Also, the first 𝚕̶𝚒̶𝚗̶𝚎̶ (edit: paragraph, oops) of TFA mentions that price controls on food were lifted in the USA in 1974.
    - kiney 6y ago
      I tried to google what price controls they mean. Could only find a price control program from 71 - 74. So that may just have delayed the inevitable for 3 years. https://www.nber.org/papers/w0279 https://www.nber.org/papers/w0279
  - LukeShu 6y ago
    Wow, that article. After the gentle introduction I rarely made it a paragraph without having a major criticism. He notes a bunch of legitimate but ultimately pretty minor criticisms of mainstream economics[1], has one actually solid argument[2] that he doesn't bring up until his conclusion. And uses that to advocate for throwing out all of mainstream neoclassical economics and all of mainstream macroeconomics, and do something totally crazy: replace it with thermodynamics[3]. He closes saying "But I’m also a hard-nosed scientist who dislikes analysis with dubious assumptions baked into it." He uses a bunch of minor criticisms and one core dissonance to argue for throwing out the current paradigm of economic science. Those "dubious assumptions" are the core of the current paradigm of economic science: that markets basically work most of the time. Believing that he's the smartest person in the field, he discards the established methodologies and replaces them with the mis-application of a more tractable field; he's doing what is sometimes referred to as quack science. ---- [1]: Yeah maybe the framing around some analysis could be better (the bulk of his arguments). Yeah, it's problematic to use one price index for one part of a comparison, and a different price index for another. [2]: Through the article, he shows that the chart is relying on believing that markets correctly value total economic output, but that markets are getting production workers' wages wrong. He doesn't call out this discrepancy until the conclusion though. IMO, it's the only argument he makes that really "debunks" the graph. However, there are lots of arguments that I can imagine economists making as to why the market gets things right or wrong in specific cases. However, he proceeds to argue that if you don't believe the market is valuing labor correctly, then why should you believe that it's valuing anything correctly. That you should totally abandon the idea of using markets to value things. [3]: I kid you not. He writes: > When you think this way, you realize that ‘useful work’ (the amount of energy put to an end use) is a good indicator of economic output. I propose that we treat useful work per labor as an alternative measure of labor productivity. The author carefully words this so that it sounds reasonable. "'useful work', yeah, that sounds like a good way of defining 'productivity'." There are two big things wrong here: 1. How do we quantify "useful"? My first reaction was: OK, sure, but the measures that you're proposing to use this instead of are measures that let the market decide what's useful and how to value that. That's the type of thing that markets are supposedly pretty good at most of the time. If you want to argue that the market's getting it wrong in this case, that'd be one thing. But lets see how he proposes quantifying it, if not by markets... 2. ...oh, "useful" is just a fluff word, and he pulled a switch-a-roo with "work"! The casual reader might think that he's talking about something somehow connected to labor, but he's not! He's talking about physics-class thermodynamics "work". My jaw dropped, I laughed out loud. He's seriously proposing that we stop measuring the productivity of labor by any human-level measure of value delivered, and instead measuring it by how much electricity and fuel is used! He even says this: > ‘Useful work’ is based on the laws of thermodynamics. The standard measure of productivity, in contrast, is based on the dubious assumptions of neoclassical economics. Yes, because thermodynamics is totally relevant here. But hey, it's a hard science™, so it's always better than drivel coming from the soft sciences, right?
11thEarlOfMar 6y ago
It would seem that the cost of producing the soup would also have to have been kept regulated before 1974. Farm subsidies kept tomato prices down?
pdq 6y ago
They have updated it for 2021: https://politicalcalculations.blogspot.com/2021/01/the-price-of-campbells-tomato-soup-in.html https://politicalcalculations.blogspot.com/2021/01/the-price...
nitwit005 6y ago
If people's forum posts are accurate, the can size has changed (shrinkflation accusations). I would assume the content has not stayed the same. The time interval is long enough that tomato varieties have changed quite a bit.
- whoopdedo 6y ago
  It's actually slightly larger now, but not by much. The standard Campbell's condensed soup can is currently 10 3/4 oz. A magazine ad[1] in 1977 showed the size as 10 1/2 oz. And that's been the size as far back as 1922[2]. That's not to say the other products in the Campbell's brand haven't changed. The "family size" and "Chunky" variations have been reported to change size at times. But the basic can has been a remarkably stable product. [1] https://books.google.com/books?id=18sDAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA37 https://books.google.com/books?id=18sDAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA37 [2] http://www.magazineart.org/main.php/v/ads/foodandbev/soupandstew/Campbell_s+Tomato+Soup+-1922C.jpg.html http://www.magazineart.org/main.php/v/ads/foodandbev/soupand...
  - sct202 6y ago
    People talk about the grocery shrink ray, but the packaged goods companies frequently have to reset the sizes of products so that they don't get too small. That's why at the stores, you'll see products shrink for a while and then suddenly the new package will be back to the normal size and say 20% MORE.
em500 6y ago
For the official US inflation calculation, this is probably in BLS series CUSR0000SEFT01 (Soups in U.S. city average, all urban consumers, seasonally adjusted). You can get the data (starting from 1978) here: https://beta.bls.gov/dataViewer/view/timeseries/CUSR0000SEFT01 https://beta.bls.gov/dataViewer/view/timeseries/CUSR0000SEFT... Using BLS numbers, you get a price increase of 346% (=246/71) from Jan 1978 through Jan 2020. If we eyeball the graph from the blog, we're looking at a price increase from $0.19 or $0.20 to $0.85, which is 425% or 447% (starting at $0.19 or $0.20 makes a big difference). Looking closely at the dots of raw data, it looks like most of the recent ads clusterred around the $0.69, $0.79, $0.89 or $1.00 level. If you buy it at the $0.69 level, you're almost exactly at the BLS 346% level, whereas at $1 you're looking at 500%. On wallmart.com, it seems you can buy it currently at between $0.98, $0.87 (4-pack) or $0.415 (12-pack) per can: https://www.walmart.com/ip/Campbell-s-Condensed-Tomato-Soup-10-75-Ounce-Can/10321636 https://www.walmart.com/ip/Campbell-s-Condensed-Tomato-Soup-... https://www.walmart.com/ip/4-Pack-Campbell-s-Condensed-Tomato-Soup-10-75-Ounce-Can/43346748 https://www.walmart.com/ip/4-Pack-Campbell-s-Condensed-Tomat... https://www.walmart.com/ip/Campbell-s-Condensed-Tomato-Soup-10-75-oz-12-Ct/375787161 https://www.walmart.com/ip/Campbell-s-Condensed-Tomato-Soup-...
bbarnett 6y ago
On top of other comments here, labour rates, and farming methods/costs have changed. At least, in many countries...
lebuffon 6y ago
This is interesting. https://www.usinflationcalculator.com/ https://www.usinflationcalculator.com/ In 1913 dollars a 10 cent can of soup is $2.66 USD today. So at $1.00 in 2021 its a bargain. :) I think modern manufacturing processes have made common items cheaper to produce and this is how the ordinary citizen has been able to survive 40 years with very little real wage movement. (my opinion)
- siltpotato 6y ago
  There's a graph somewhere on my laptop of the price of eggs over time calculated in Excel using CPI. The real-price has gone down in the U.S.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- csharptwdec19 6y ago
  I wouldn't suggest using the 1913 price as a baseline. Noticing in the article, the price stayed close to 10 cents until 1973-1974ish. That time range (probably-not-coincidentally) is when the Gas shortages happen. This is interesting to think about. Transportation/logistic advancements in the first half of the 1900s allowed pricing at worst to stay consistent over a long period of time, at best allowed companies to increase their profits as supply chains were established that made transporting completed product cheaper. Thinking about things like trucks etc here.
- tfehring 6y ago
  Production processes more generally, yeah. A farmer using 1913 technology can’t even come close to competing in today’s market. It would be hard even in high-end price-insensitive segments (think farmers markets and farm to table restaurants). Americans spent more on food than on housing until ~1950, despite going to restaurants much less frequently than today. Today they spend over 3x as much on housing as food. https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2012/04/how-america-spends-money-100-years-in-the-life-of-the-family-budget/255475/ https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2012/04/how-ame...

78 points by monort 6y ago

slacktide 6y ago

Damnit, now I want a grilled cheese sandwich.

rbobby 6y ago
And soup in a mug.

torgoguys 6y ago

Sure, it's gone up a lot since the 70s, but appears artificially static low before that. 10 cents in 1900 (from the graph) would be over $3.00 in today's money.

frankbreetz 6y ago
I wonder if that means we can expect the price to keep rising until it reaches $3.00. Or, maybe we will find out how efficient we got when the price levels out.
- ec109685 6y ago
  There's nothing magical about the $3.00 price.
paulcole 6y ago
Good eye! It seems most of the price escalation has occurred since 10 April 1974, when the U.S. government lifted its price controls on food.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- nybble41 6y ago
  Price controls on food would explain the short interval where the price was being controlled: 1971 to 1974. What about the span from 1895 to 1970 where there were no price controls and yet the price hardly changed at all?
  - christkv 6y ago
    I would think that in the period 1895 to 1970 the relative price of the can to wage growth means it got cheaper relative to purchasing power?

lumost 6y ago

I'd be curious to see estimates of the US economy with different deflators over the last 50 years. In particular the last 20 years of campbell's price history would indicate some form of inflation that ran much faster than the CPI. A reasonable resolution the the productivity/wage gap would be that productivity simply hasn't risen very much over the last 50 years, and apparent productivity/wage gaps are due to differences in how the GDP deflator is calculated.

thesausageking 6y ago

In 1971, the US ended the convertibility of the dollar into gold and shifted the dollar to be fiat money. Many dollar-based metrics have a similar change of slope around 1971: https://wtfhappenedin1971.com/ https://wtfhappenedin1971.com/

gruez 6y ago
I'm surprised how often this site gets linked despite being almost entirely composed of correlation graphs[1]. If you're going to argue that the end of the gold standard is responsible for many of today's economic woes, I'm going to need more rigorous evidence than a bunch of charts with arrows on them. Speaking of which, a quick search has shown that the first charts has some flaws[2]. The use of several dozen images in lieu of substantive analysis/evidence makes is reminiscent of a gish gallop[2], which is a red flag for me. [1] cellphone and cancer, anyone? https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/925 https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/925 [2] https://economicsfromthetopdown.com/2020/01/17/debunking-the-productivity-pay-gap/ https://economicsfromthetopdown.com/2020/01/17/debunking-the... [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gish_gallop https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gish_gallop
- p1necone 6y ago
  Also, the first 𝚕̶𝚒̶𝚗̶𝚎̶ (edit: paragraph, oops) of TFA mentions that price controls on food were lifted in the USA in 1974.
  - kiney 6y ago
    I tried to google what price controls they mean. Could only find a price control program from 71 - 74. So that may just have delayed the inevitable for 3 years. https://www.nber.org/papers/w0279 https://www.nber.org/papers/w0279
- LukeShu 6y ago
  Wow, that article. After the gentle introduction I rarely made it a paragraph without having a major criticism. He notes a bunch of legitimate but ultimately pretty minor criticisms of mainstream economics[1], has one actually solid argument[2] that he doesn't bring up until his conclusion. And uses that to advocate for throwing out all of mainstream neoclassical economics and all of mainstream macroeconomics, and do something totally crazy: replace it with thermodynamics[3]. He closes saying "But I’m also a hard-nosed scientist who dislikes analysis with dubious assumptions baked into it." He uses a bunch of minor criticisms and one core dissonance to argue for throwing out the current paradigm of economic science. Those "dubious assumptions" are the core of the current paradigm of economic science: that markets basically work most of the time. Believing that he's the smartest person in the field, he discards the established methodologies and replaces them with the mis-application of a more tractable field; he's doing what is sometimes referred to as quack science. ---- [1]: Yeah maybe the framing around some analysis could be better (the bulk of his arguments). Yeah, it's problematic to use one price index for one part of a comparison, and a different price index for another. [2]: Through the article, he shows that the chart is relying on believing that markets correctly value total economic output, but that markets are getting production workers' wages wrong. He doesn't call out this discrepancy until the conclusion though. IMO, it's the only argument he makes that really "debunks" the graph. However, there are lots of arguments that I can imagine economists making as to why the market gets things right or wrong in specific cases. However, he proceeds to argue that if you don't believe the market is valuing labor correctly, then why should you believe that it's valuing anything correctly. That you should totally abandon the idea of using markets to value things. [3]: I kid you not. He writes: > When you think this way, you realize that ‘useful work’ (the amount of energy put to an end use) is a good indicator of economic output. I propose that we treat useful work per labor as an alternative measure of labor productivity. The author carefully words this so that it sounds reasonable. "'useful work', yeah, that sounds like a good way of defining 'productivity'." There are two big things wrong here: 1. How do we quantify "useful"? My first reaction was: OK, sure, but the measures that you're proposing to use this instead of are measures that let the market decide what's useful and how to value that. That's the type of thing that markets are supposedly pretty good at most of the time. If you want to argue that the market's getting it wrong in this case, that'd be one thing. But lets see how he proposes quantifying it, if not by markets... 2. ...oh, "useful" is just a fluff word, and he pulled a switch-a-roo with "work"! The casual reader might think that he's talking about something somehow connected to labor, but he's not! He's talking about physics-class thermodynamics "work". My jaw dropped, I laughed out loud. He's seriously proposing that we stop measuring the productivity of labor by any human-level measure of value delivered, and instead measuring it by how much electricity and fuel is used! He even says this: > ‘Useful work’ is based on the laws of thermodynamics. The standard measure of productivity, in contrast, is based on the dubious assumptions of neoclassical economics. Yes, because thermodynamics is totally relevant here. But hey, it's a hard science™, so it's always better than drivel coming from the soft sciences, right?

11thEarlOfMar 6y ago

It would seem that the cost of producing the soup would also have to have been kept regulated before 1974. Farm subsidies kept tomato prices down?

pdq 6y ago

They have updated it for 2021: https://politicalcalculations.blogspot.com/2021/01/the-price-of-campbells-tomato-soup-in.html https://politicalcalculations.blogspot.com/2021/01/the-price...

nitwit005 6y ago

If people's forum posts are accurate, the can size has changed (shrinkflation accusations). I would assume the content has not stayed the same. The time interval is long enough that tomato varieties have changed quite a bit.

whoopdedo 6y ago
It's actually slightly larger now, but not by much. The standard Campbell's condensed soup can is currently 10 3/4 oz. A magazine ad[1] in 1977 showed the size as 10 1/2 oz. And that's been the size as far back as 1922[2]. That's not to say the other products in the Campbell's brand haven't changed. The "family size" and "Chunky" variations have been reported to change size at times. But the basic can has been a remarkably stable product. [1] https://books.google.com/books?id=18sDAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA37 https://books.google.com/books?id=18sDAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA37 [2] http://www.magazineart.org/main.php/v/ads/foodandbev/soupandstew/Campbell_s+Tomato+Soup+-1922C.jpg.html http://www.magazineart.org/main.php/v/ads/foodandbev/soupand...
- sct202 6y ago
  People talk about the grocery shrink ray, but the packaged goods companies frequently have to reset the sizes of products so that they don't get too small. That's why at the stores, you'll see products shrink for a while and then suddenly the new package will be back to the normal size and say 20% MORE.

em500 6y ago

For the official US inflation calculation, this is probably in BLS series CUSR0000SEFT01 (Soups in U.S. city average, all urban consumers, seasonally adjusted). You can get the data (starting from 1978) here: https://beta.bls.gov/dataViewer/view/timeseries/CUSR0000SEFT01 https://beta.bls.gov/dataViewer/view/timeseries/CUSR0000SEFT... Using BLS numbers, you get a price increase of 346% (=246/71) from Jan 1978 through Jan 2020. If we eyeball the graph from the blog, we're looking at a price increase from $0.19 or $0.20 to $0.85, which is 425% or 447% (starting at $0.19 or $0.20 makes a big difference). Looking closely at the dots of raw data, it looks like most of the recent ads clusterred around the $0.69, $0.79, $0.89 or $1.00 level. If you buy it at the $0.69 level, you're almost exactly at the BLS 346% level, whereas at $1 you're looking at 500%. On wallmart.com, it seems you can buy it currently at between $0.98, $0.87 (4-pack) or $0.415 (12-pack) per can: https://www.walmart.com/ip/Campbell-s-Condensed-Tomato-Soup-10-75-Ounce-Can/10321636 https://www.walmart.com/ip/Campbell-s-Condensed-Tomato-Soup-... https://www.walmart.com/ip/4-Pack-Campbell-s-Condensed-Tomato-Soup-10-75-Ounce-Can/43346748 https://www.walmart.com/ip/4-Pack-Campbell-s-Condensed-Tomat... https://www.walmart.com/ip/Campbell-s-Condensed-Tomato-Soup-10-75-oz-12-Ct/375787161 https://www.walmart.com/ip/Campbell-s-Condensed-Tomato-Soup-...

bbarnett 6y ago

On top of other comments here, labour rates, and farming methods/costs have changed. At least, in many countries...

lebuffon 6y ago

This is interesting. https://www.usinflationcalculator.com/ https://www.usinflationcalculator.com/ In 1913 dollars a 10 cent can of soup is $2.66 USD today. So at $1.00 in 2021 its a bargain. :) I think modern manufacturing processes have made common items cheaper to produce and this is how the ordinary citizen has been able to survive 40 years with very little real wage movement. (my opinion)

siltpotato 6y ago
There's a graph somewhere on my laptop of the price of eggs over time calculated in Excel using CPI. The real-price has gone down in the U.S.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
csharptwdec19 6y ago
I wouldn't suggest using the 1913 price as a baseline. Noticing in the article, the price stayed close to 10 cents until 1973-1974ish. That time range (probably-not-coincidentally) is when the Gas shortages happen. This is interesting to think about. Transportation/logistic advancements in the first half of the 1900s allowed pricing at worst to stay consistent over a long period of time, at best allowed companies to increase their profits as supply chains were established that made transporting completed product cheaper. Thinking about things like trucks etc here.
tfehring 6y ago
Production processes more generally, yeah. A farmer using 1913 technology can’t even come close to competing in today’s market. It would be hard even in high-end price-insensitive segments (think farmers markets and farm to table restaurants). Americans spent more on food than on housing until ~1950, despite going to restaurants much less frequently than today. Today they spend over 3x as much on housing as food. https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2012/04/how-america-spends-money-100-years-in-the-life-of-the-family-budget/255475/ https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2012/04/how-ame...