10 ms·

Yesterday at Walmart i bought: shampoo, burger buns, ground coffee, and a bar of chocolate for $28. The cost of everything is ridiculous this these days.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
FractalParadigm 5y ago
Anecdotally, our regular grocery bill increased from ~$150 to >$250 ($CAD) per week*. And that's with cutbacks on meats and snacks. At this point our only saving grace is the rent increase freeze my province enacted due to COVID. I'm "saving" ~$100/month because of that. * edit: this is over the past ~18 months we've seen this increase
- King-Aaron 5y ago
  Very similar here in Australia. I recall ten years ago that a hundred dollars would fill a trolley - now the same money gets you about one to one and a half bags of groceries.
  - AussieWog93 5y ago
    I haven't noticed the same change, but to be fair we buy all home brand goods. Aside from mince, I can't think of any grocery product that has had a substantial price increase in the last couple of years.
- andruby 5y ago
  Without wanting to distract from your point. Are you / your family spending more time at home and / or changed your buying behavior? I noticed that we spend more on groceries too, but mostly because we've both been working from home more, and we've also compensated the lack of going out for dinner with slightly more expensive shopping.
silisili 5y ago
Turns out, this is what happens when you give everyone more money. I'm not against a higher minimum wage. I'm less for these 'covid' checks that go out that a lot of people don't need. But, both of these things mean higher prices for everyone else. For people upset at this comment: It's literally taught in ECON 101.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- dendriti 5y ago
  You think that policy decisions should be made based on your understanding of Econ 101?
  - silisili 5y ago
    I think that anyone should take basic econ classes, you learn a lot. Unfortunately, it's not one of those classes you can 'have a different understanding of' with any seriousness.
    - pigeonhole123 5y ago
      Well you see, to be critical of a paradigm, for example modern monetary theory, you have to have a PhD in that paradigm. That’s why you can’t say that god doesn’t exist unless you’re a priest or a theologian. Makes sense to me
      - _gcnk 5y ago
        No, you absolutely can. Priests are "qualified" through reading religious texts of dubious validity. If anything, they should be trusted less. I don't know if it's even possible to answer whether a god exists, but it's quite easy to find the flaws in religious stories, and if anyone can answer that question, it's certainly not them.
        5y ago
HenryKissinger 5y ago
Too many people earning 6 figures these days. Companies figure that they can raise prices and consumers will absorb the costs. Shampoo companies need to pay their software engineers 340k too. /s
nimos 5y ago
Thank god TVs keep getting bigger so we can keep inflation down with hedonic adjustments.[0] [0][https://www.bls.gov/cpi/quality-adjustment/questions-and-answers.htm https://www.bls.gov/cpi/quality-adjustment/questions-and-ans...] edit: Not that I love the AEI I think this is one of the most important pictures of the 21st century: https://www.aei.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/cpichart2019.png?x91208 https://www.aei.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/cpichart2019....
- Thorrez 5y ago
  Is that graph saying cars stayed the exact same price in dollars even with 56% inflation? That doesn't make sense to me.
  - nimos 5y ago
    Yup. Welcome to the wild wild west of hedonic adjustment. Things like side impact airbags and rear view cameras basically give the BLS unlimited power to drive down inflation.
    - standeven 5y ago
      I don't believe new or used vehicle purchases qualify for hedonic adjustments. https://www.bls.gov/cpi/quality-adjustment/home.htm https://www.bls.gov/cpi/quality-adjustment/home.htm
      - nimos 5y ago
        Cars fall under cost based adjustments. This is the most recent (AFAIK) document the BLS has published: https://www.bls.gov/cpi/quality-adjustment/new-vehicles.pdf https://www.bls.gov/cpi/quality-adjustment/new-vehicles.pdf It's not entirely an unfair point in the sense clearly a modern car with modern safety and electronics costs more to produce (hence the cost basis). But as far as I know the BLS is basically given free reign to invent the cost basis.
  - runeks 5y ago
whazor 5y ago
Shampoo, chocolate, and coffee are products where you have expensive brands. Having said that, for all those products with fancy brands I would spend 13 dollars in The Netherlands. For cheapest brands only 6 dollar in total.
- soylentnewsorg 5y ago
  And it's the same here. Where 12oz of coffe at walmart can cost you $3-20, hamburger buns can cost you $3-20 depending on brand and price, and chocolate can be had for under a dollar, what the OP states tells us literally nothing. My toothpaste at walmart is $1 for a 6.5oz tube. My old shampoo is currently 88c for 12oz. The one I switched to - nioxin, is $20 for 16oz. Things at the grocery store are dirt cheap in the US compared to any country in Europe. And the salaries are more. Unless we're talking Ukraine and friends, where carrots and potatoes are pretty much free (while meat is of lower quality and higher price). But they're definitely much, much cheaper than where you are. Hand-trimmed chicken breast, without the rib meat, is $2/lb. Electronics - your price number in EUR is our number. But in USD. source: I have been to every EU country for work, and lived in several long-term. And am originally from Europe.
  - dustintrex 5y ago
    $20 for hamburger buns? In Australia even the fancy pants brioche buns at the local Whole Foods equivalent are $5 for 4. https://www.harrisfarm.com.au/products/boundary-road-bread-brioche-burger-buns-81480 https://www.harrisfarm.com.au/products/boundary-road-bread-b...
    - kleiba 5y ago
      And let's not forget differences in package sizes. For instance, I could buy shampoo, burger buns, ground coffee, and a chocolate bar for under 7 Euros at Aldi, but that would mean: - Shampoo: ~8oz - Pack of burger buns: 6 pieces - Ground coffee: bag of 2 pounds - Chocolate bar: probably the same as everywhere
      - 5y ago
Semaphor 5y ago
For another anecdote, I just looked at my monthly grocery spending in the last 3 years, and there is no significant difference visible. Germany. edit, to be more precise: I looked at January to September for 2019, 20 and 21, and the difference was < 100€ over that timeframe.
- ChuckNorris89 5y ago
  To be fair, Germany has the lowest consumer prices on food of almost any EU country due to the economies of scale it can leverage, similar to pre-Brexit UK. Meanwhile, Austria and Denmark have the most expensive food prices in the EU while salaries aren't higher than Germany, at least not in Austria. And for the sake of contrast, let's talk about the insane groceries prices in Switzerland (not EU but borders Germany). Romania and Bulgaria have the lowest prices in the EU, but when you adjust to median income, they're actually really high "thanks" to the EU's ease of trade where Romanian/Bulgarian producers can make more money selling their goods to the richer countries rather than locally therefore reducing the local supply, resulting in increased prices for the locals as a consequence. And, AFAIK, it's the same in North America, with the US having the lowest consumer prices and highest salaries while neighboring Canada has to make due with higher prices and lower wages. My point is, the perceived expense of goods varies wildly based on your region's economic leverage, so large, rich countries with powerful economies and huge supply chains tend to be much better off at dampening these effects than the rest.
  - KptMarchewa 5y ago
    Not sure from where you get your EU data. Eurostat disagrees: https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php?title=Comparative_price_levels_for_food,_beverages_and_tobacco https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php...
  - Tarsul 5y ago
    But also regarding Germany: the market for supermarkets is very crowded (Aldi, Lidl, Edeka etc.) where there is a lot of price pressure between supermarkets. So the companies don't profit as much as they could in markets with less competition. The real beneficiary are the consumers.
jjav 5y ago
It's not too many years ago I was used to filling a shopping cart (not overflowing, but pretty full) for more than a week worth of food and it was hardly ever over $100. These days a hand basket with just a handful of things and I always end up paying $90-$100. Inflation is scary out of control last few years.
dazc 5y ago
I buy a single-serving of Lasagne from Waitrose and it's £4 ($5.45 usd). A friend of mine buys the same size frozen lasagne from Tesco and, IIRC, it's 85 pence ($1 usd). I do agree with the point that food price inflation is real but there are so many varieties of the same product that it's hard to compare random examples.
- ampgt 5y ago
  Same size, but same quality? “Cheap” food does no one any good if the quality has an adverse effect on health
  - dazc 5y ago
    I agree. A consequence of rising food prices may result in people opting for lower quality alternatives although, in the example above, this is just someone who always buys the cheapest regardless. There are people like this.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - OJFord 5y ago
    That's not the point, or sort of is but you're agreeing - you can't compare like for like 'I bought shampoo and a lasagne' because in almost any part of almost any country there's a huge range of possible costs for that.
  - alisonkisk 5y ago
    Healthy food is far cheaper than unhealthy food, on an overall diet basis. Expensive food is mostly prepared package stuff with extra sugar and filler carbs that don't cure hunger.
- rand49an 5y ago
  Quite a cherry pick. Waitrose is a high end supermarket where as Tesco is not. It's why you can only find them in the richest towns in the country. Having eaten both 85p ready meals and £4+ ones, the products are clearly not the same either.
JohnJamesRambo 5y ago
Same anecdata here as well. My girlfriend bought >$50 worth of groceries yesterday at Walmart and I couldn’t tell what had been bought today when I was looking for something to eat. These CPI numbers are bad and they don’t even begin to match my experiences.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

FractalParadigm 5y ago

Anecdotally, our regular grocery bill increased from ~$150 to >$250 ($CAD) per week*. And that's with cutbacks on meats and snacks. At this point our only saving grace is the rent increase freeze my province enacted due to COVID. I'm "saving" ~$100/month because of that. * edit: this is over the past ~18 months we've seen this increase

King-Aaron 5y ago
Very similar here in Australia. I recall ten years ago that a hundred dollars would fill a trolley - now the same money gets you about one to one and a half bags of groceries.
- AussieWog93 5y ago
  I haven't noticed the same change, but to be fair we buy all home brand goods. Aside from mince, I can't think of any grocery product that has had a substantial price increase in the last couple of years.
andruby 5y ago
Without wanting to distract from your point. Are you / your family spending more time at home and / or changed your buying behavior? I noticed that we spend more on groceries too, but mostly because we've both been working from home more, and we've also compensated the lack of going out for dinner with slightly more expensive shopping.

silisili 5y ago

Turns out, this is what happens when you give everyone more money. I'm not against a higher minimum wage. I'm less for these 'covid' checks that go out that a lot of people don't need. But, both of these things mean higher prices for everyone else. For people upset at this comment: It's literally taught in ECON 101.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
dendriti 5y ago
You think that policy decisions should be made based on your understanding of Econ 101?
- silisili 5y ago
  I think that anyone should take basic econ classes, you learn a lot. Unfortunately, it's not one of those classes you can 'have a different understanding of' with any seriousness.
  - pigeonhole123 5y ago
    Well you see, to be critical of a paradigm, for example modern monetary theory, you have to have a PhD in that paradigm. That’s why you can’t say that god doesn’t exist unless you’re a priest or a theologian. Makes sense to me
    - _gcnk 5y ago
      No, you absolutely can. Priests are "qualified" through reading religious texts of dubious validity. If anything, they should be trusted less. I don't know if it's even possible to answer whether a god exists, but it's quite easy to find the flaws in religious stories, and if anyone can answer that question, it's certainly not them.
      - 5y ago

HenryKissinger 5y ago

Too many people earning 6 figures these days. Companies figure that they can raise prices and consumers will absorb the costs. Shampoo companies need to pay their software engineers 340k too. /s

nimos 5y ago

Thank god TVs keep getting bigger so we can keep inflation down with hedonic adjustments.[0] [0][https://www.bls.gov/cpi/quality-adjustment/questions-and-answers.htm https://www.bls.gov/cpi/quality-adjustment/questions-and-ans...] edit: Not that I love the AEI I think this is one of the most important pictures of the 21st century: https://www.aei.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/cpichart2019.png?x91208 https://www.aei.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/cpichart2019....

Thorrez 5y ago
Is that graph saying cars stayed the exact same price in dollars even with 56% inflation? That doesn't make sense to me.
- nimos 5y ago
  Yup. Welcome to the wild wild west of hedonic adjustment. Things like side impact airbags and rear view cameras basically give the BLS unlimited power to drive down inflation.
  - standeven 5y ago
    I don't believe new or used vehicle purchases qualify for hedonic adjustments. https://www.bls.gov/cpi/quality-adjustment/home.htm https://www.bls.gov/cpi/quality-adjustment/home.htm
    - nimos 5y ago
      Cars fall under cost based adjustments. This is the most recent (AFAIK) document the BLS has published: https://www.bls.gov/cpi/quality-adjustment/new-vehicles.pdf https://www.bls.gov/cpi/quality-adjustment/new-vehicles.pdf It's not entirely an unfair point in the sense clearly a modern car with modern safety and electronics costs more to produce (hence the cost basis). But as far as I know the BLS is basically given free reign to invent the cost basis.
- runeks 5y ago

whazor 5y ago

Shampoo, chocolate, and coffee are products where you have expensive brands. Having said that, for all those products with fancy brands I would spend 13 dollars in The Netherlands. For cheapest brands only 6 dollar in total.

soylentnewsorg 5y ago
And it's the same here. Where 12oz of coffe at walmart can cost you $3-20, hamburger buns can cost you $3-20 depending on brand and price, and chocolate can be had for under a dollar, what the OP states tells us literally nothing. My toothpaste at walmart is $1 for a 6.5oz tube. My old shampoo is currently 88c for 12oz. The one I switched to - nioxin, is $20 for 16oz. Things at the grocery store are dirt cheap in the US compared to any country in Europe. And the salaries are more. Unless we're talking Ukraine and friends, where carrots and potatoes are pretty much free (while meat is of lower quality and higher price). But they're definitely much, much cheaper than where you are. Hand-trimmed chicken breast, without the rib meat, is $2/lb. Electronics - your price number in EUR is our number. But in USD. source: I have been to every EU country for work, and lived in several long-term. And am originally from Europe.
- dustintrex 5y ago
  $20 for hamburger buns? In Australia even the fancy pants brioche buns at the local Whole Foods equivalent are $5 for 4. https://www.harrisfarm.com.au/products/boundary-road-bread-brioche-burger-buns-81480 https://www.harrisfarm.com.au/products/boundary-road-bread-b...
  - kleiba 5y ago
    And let's not forget differences in package sizes. For instance, I could buy shampoo, burger buns, ground coffee, and a chocolate bar for under 7 Euros at Aldi, but that would mean: - Shampoo: ~8oz - Pack of burger buns: 6 pieces - Ground coffee: bag of 2 pounds - Chocolate bar: probably the same as everywhere
    - 5y ago

Semaphor 5y ago

For another anecdote, I just looked at my monthly grocery spending in the last 3 years, and there is no significant difference visible. Germany. edit, to be more precise: I looked at January to September for 2019, 20 and 21, and the difference was < 100€ over that timeframe.

ChuckNorris89 5y ago
To be fair, Germany has the lowest consumer prices on food of almost any EU country due to the economies of scale it can leverage, similar to pre-Brexit UK. Meanwhile, Austria and Denmark have the most expensive food prices in the EU while salaries aren't higher than Germany, at least not in Austria. And for the sake of contrast, let's talk about the insane groceries prices in Switzerland (not EU but borders Germany). Romania and Bulgaria have the lowest prices in the EU, but when you adjust to median income, they're actually really high "thanks" to the EU's ease of trade where Romanian/Bulgarian producers can make more money selling their goods to the richer countries rather than locally therefore reducing the local supply, resulting in increased prices for the locals as a consequence. And, AFAIK, it's the same in North America, with the US having the lowest consumer prices and highest salaries while neighboring Canada has to make due with higher prices and lower wages. My point is, the perceived expense of goods varies wildly based on your region's economic leverage, so large, rich countries with powerful economies and huge supply chains tend to be much better off at dampening these effects than the rest.
- KptMarchewa 5y ago
  Not sure from where you get your EU data. Eurostat disagrees: https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php?title=Comparative_price_levels_for_food,_beverages_and_tobacco https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php...
- Tarsul 5y ago
  But also regarding Germany: the market for supermarkets is very crowded (Aldi, Lidl, Edeka etc.) where there is a lot of price pressure between supermarkets. So the companies don't profit as much as they could in markets with less competition. The real beneficiary are the consumers.

jjav 5y ago

It's not too many years ago I was used to filling a shopping cart (not overflowing, but pretty full) for more than a week worth of food and it was hardly ever over $100. These days a hand basket with just a handful of things and I always end up paying $90-$100. Inflation is scary out of control last few years.

dazc 5y ago

I buy a single-serving of Lasagne from Waitrose and it's £4 ($5.45 usd). A friend of mine buys the same size frozen lasagne from Tesco and, IIRC, it's 85 pence ($1 usd). I do agree with the point that food price inflation is real but there are so many varieties of the same product that it's hard to compare random examples.

ampgt 5y ago
Same size, but same quality? “Cheap” food does no one any good if the quality has an adverse effect on health
- dazc 5y ago
  I agree. A consequence of rising food prices may result in people opting for lower quality alternatives although, in the example above, this is just someone who always buys the cheapest regardless. There are people like this.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- OJFord 5y ago
  That's not the point, or sort of is but you're agreeing - you can't compare like for like 'I bought shampoo and a lasagne' because in almost any part of almost any country there's a huge range of possible costs for that.
- alisonkisk 5y ago
  Healthy food is far cheaper than unhealthy food, on an overall diet basis. Expensive food is mostly prepared package stuff with extra sugar and filler carbs that don't cure hunger.
rand49an 5y ago
Quite a cherry pick. Waitrose is a high end supermarket where as Tesco is not. It's why you can only find them in the richest towns in the country. Having eaten both 85p ready meals and £4+ ones, the products are clearly not the same either.

JohnJamesRambo 5y ago

Same anecdata here as well. My girlfriend bought >$50 worth of groceries yesterday at Walmart and I couldn’t tell what had been bought today when I was looking for something to eat. These CPI numbers are bad and they don’t even begin to match my experiences.