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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 $
by post_break 4y ago
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.
- phkahler 4y agoA Sausage McMuffin and a coke used to cost $2.12 at most locations near me two years ago. Today it varies from $2.95 up to $3.85 (strangely this high value is in Detroit proper where income is lowest vs the burbs). 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.
- shmatt 4y ago
- latency-guy2 4y agoSo, why did these greedy companies not raise prices to this rate when times were good? Surely there's more money exchanging hands when times are fine and dandy.
- shmatt 4y agoThe whole point of this inflation is, times ARE good. People have too much money to spend, the job market is too hot, which is why the fed is raising rates so fast When times are bad, McDonalds sales go way down, then they re-introduce the $1 menu
- treis 4y agoI think a lot of this is a combination of "because everyone else is doing it" and "because we can". I've seen a huge price increase in branded and prepared food products. Staples like fruit, veggies, eggs, etc. has gone up in price but much less than the branded. I also think a lot of companies are running near capacity. Labor market is tight and the supply chain is still reeling from Covid. So there's not really an opportunity to lower/maintain prices to get market share.
- throwaway96148 4y agoPorque no los dos?
- PaywallBuster 4y agostock is not 100% correlated with earnings/profiteering https://corporate.mcdonalds.com/corpmcd/en-us/our-stories/article/FinancialNews.Q2-2022-results.html https://corporate.mcdonalds.com/corpmcd/en-us/our-stories/ar... plenty of numbers down from 2021 including margins
- rtkwe 4y agoSure but companies are also still reporting record profits in many cases right now so it's clearly not just input costs driving up prices.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- weberer 4y ago>companies are also still reporting record profits Adjusted for inflation?
- rtkwe 4y agoTheir profits account for inflation already in some ways because the increased costs are already accounted for when we're talking about profits by definition.
- hattmall 4y agoYes, but you have adjust those earnings for inflation... It's even more complex because inflation is variable across industries.
- rtkwe 4y agoTheir increased costs are already factored in because we're talking about profits though so I'm not sure how much use deducting that again would be for determining that.
- 4y ago
- roenxi 4y ago1) Greed isn't a variable here - McDonalds today can't be more greedy than McDonalds in 2020. McDonalds in 2020 was already capped out as far as greed goes. They have been the poster child for corporate greed for decades. If greed could make prices go up they'd have been selling $3 burgers back in 1950. 2) If prices go up by 50% without an increase in costs, profit should go up by much more than 50% and share prices should be doubling, tripling, etc. If their stock is up a lesser percent than the price of their goods, that suggests they are being squeezed. The share price going up is effectively just another effect of inflation.
- Sohcahtoa82 4y ago> They have been the poster child for corporate greed for decades. I would give that title to Walmart and EA Games.
- cheschire 4y agoWhy would you pick the situation that is clearly impossible when we're talking about inflation? Of course costs have increased. If prices go up by 50%, and then you subtract the increase in cost, then any measure over 0 is potentially a greed-driven number. It seems unlikely that zero companies are riding the wave of inflation acceptance in the population. At least some companies must be increasing their costs because most people aren't willing to check the math. That isn't always greed related, sure, and some companies may be hedging against further cost increases on their end, and some may be using the increased profits to recover from COVID losses. But still, saying greed isn't a variable, as you did, seems a bit naive. Or am I missing some greater economic concept?
- nebula8804 4y agoI feel like there is an opportunity for an app here that lets you input what you buy and see how the price has increased compared to the competition. There seems to be a lack of automated price comparisons here. I guess people can compare prices when shopping in store but if all companies raise their prices, I'd imagine some people would just stop buying if they knew about the price collusion more easily. I thought a cool app for the Apple AR goggles is to allow you to overlay the inflation increase of prices as you walk through a grocery store.
- caseysoftware 4y agoInflation - value of currency going down - would also drive stock prices up even if the underlying value is stable.
- golergka 4y agoI don't get people like you. You're saying that on one hand, McDonald's raises prices unreasonably high because they are greedy. But on the other hand, you're saying that other corporations are not eating up McDonald's market share with lower prices because... why? Because those other corporations are not greedy, and just want to help McDonalds out?
- phkahler 4y ago>> And their stock is up 30% in the same timeframe. That's not inflation hitting supply chains, that's just corporate greed You're assuming the stock price reflects increased profit. I don't doubt that, but it is not a given. IMHO the stock market has been going up for 20 years due to the 401K plan thing - the highest income people are indiscriminately dumping part of their pay into mutual funds every month. This is part of the reason white-collar jobs were more protected during covid, while hourly folks got told to stay home. If they made people with 401K stop working the market would have collapsed.
- judge2020 4y agoFor my closest McD’s it’s still $1 for a large soft drink at least (I know some franchises have the ability to change the cost of a large nowadays), but it is $2.49 for a sausage McMuffin.
- creaghpatr 4y agoSoft drinks are a loss leader for fast food, which is why judging McDos on the price of a single item like soda or mcmuffin is a bit oversimplified. Pricing strategy fluctuates (sometimes) independently of supply costs.
- mynameishere 4y agoHa ha, no. That's where the money is. They have like 90 percent margins on those syrup/water mixes. ... 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.
- creaghpatr 4y ago>They have like 90 percent margins on those syrup/water mixes. Wait, nevermind you're right about that.
- kipchak 4y agoI know this is sarcastic, but bakery outlets can be a great way to get your sugar junk for cheap if there's one nearby, though they're all pretty close to expiration.
- Sohcahtoa82 4y ago> They have like 90 percent margins on those syrup/water mixes. 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.
- samatman 4y agoIt's not strange when prices are higher in places with high demand and fewer options.
- jmacd 4y agoThat is less about inflation and more about pricing power. An Egg McMuffin is a low-grade foodstuff in one community (probably higher income), but a "treat" or extravagant breakfast in another (probably low income). The Egg McMuffin has far more pricing power in Detroit than it does on Rodeo Drive. 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.
- eschulz 4y agoAre taxes not higher in Detroit for things like fast food? I'm asking since I think Detroit does have the highest property taxes in the state and one of the highest in the country.
- trebbble 4y agoEverything I care about definitely seems to have gone up a lot more than the nominal inflation rate would suggest. Maybe not 50%, but... certainly more than 20% over the last two years. 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)
- norwalkbear 4y agoYea, the expert class is under idealogical capture You got fraud in many fields like social science. depression, and Alzheimer's research were the hot fraud of the last couple weeks. Experts are just spinning things to fit their idealogies. Regular folks must start evaluating how inflation is personally affecting us and make noise.
- spookthesunset 4y agoIs the menu prices on the app less than you'd see at the drive through window?
- trebbble 4y agoNot sure. I know they push tons of deals through the apps. I know this second-hand, including from someone who routinely gets entire meals from Taco Bell, specifically, for a couple dollars—just as you used to be able to do off the normal menu. Sometimes he can get absurd amounts of food for less than a dollar—just as you used to be able to do couponing or deal-hunting. In short, what it looks like to me is the normal prices became "sale" prices, the former sale prices became super-duper-sale prices, and the new menu prices are a totally new massive-profit-margin category that didn't exist before. 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.
- roflyear 4y ago
- curiousllama 4y agogasoline
- roflyear 4y agoWho refers to buying gasoline as their "gas bill" ??? lol? You don't get billed for gas.. confusing statements. Anyway, gasoline is going way down.
- 2000UltraDeluxe 4y agoI.e. "petrol" for the rest of us. :)
- Yizahi 4y agoOr "benzin" :)
- post_break 4y agoMy natural gas bill used to be $16 before I used a single ccf, now it's over $20. This winter I'm going to keep the heat at 60. 1500 square foot house. My winter heating bill maxed out at like 60, I'm looking at double that this winter.
- ChrisLomont 4y ago>But my electricity price literally doubled. What supplier and location, out of curiosity?
- post_break 4y agoThe open market of Texas, sigh.
- alostpuppy 4y agoOof.
- roflyear 4y ago
- lettergram 4y agohttps://www.texaselectricityratings.com/resources/historical-rates https://www.texaselectricityratings.com/resources/historical... Says the guy who can’t spend 2 seconds searching. Energy prices at least doubled in Texas. And was relatively stable 2016 through mid 2021
- roflyear 4y ago
- sangnoir 4y agoTexas energy pricing went up because of losses incurred in early 2021 during the infamous winterstorm that resulted in runaway prices. Most energy companies ran into losses, but the supervising authority approved loss recovery via price increases over a number of years.
- engineer_22 4y agoWhy are you making this personal?
- chrisjc 4y ago> My house insurance is up 30% 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)
- post_break 4y agoBecause it stings. 2019 I paid $1400 for insurance for my home, this past June I paid $2200. Same home, no massive improvements, just pay more.
- brianwawok 4y agoDid you shop it? 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.
- post_break 4y agoI have an insurance agent who shops it to every carrier. I jump around every year but it doesn't help too much because the insurance for the insurance companies are tightening their belts.
- brianwawok 4y agoYour agent takes a cut, you may be able to save more going alone if you are willing to do the legwork.
- lotsofpulp 4y agoLabor, material, and risk costs have changed though.
- pirate787 4y agoCoastal and flood prone insurance is rising in the US at a higher fixed rates the next couple of years because of federal policy changes that reduce the insurance cross-subsidy for riskier areas.
- gambiting 4y agoMy gas(for heating, not petrol) has literally just gone up 600%. You look at these numbers posted in the media and you think "what are they on about? What 8.5%?".
- roflyear 4y agoMust be Europe, right?
- brianwawok 4y agoSo it's an average? 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/economy/inflation-calculator.html 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)
- devin 4y agoFrom what to what? I don't know if you're talking about a 600% increase of a tiny number or what.
- gambiting 4y ago£0.03/kWh to £0.18/kWh. Yes the number overall is tiny - but it still means that whatever I used to spend on heating/hot water, is now 6x higher.
- mdip 4y agoFood is all over the place these days as long as that place is "up". 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.
- lettergram 4y agoThe inflation on food due to high fuel and fertilizer prices won’t really kick in until October -> February during harvest. 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.
- HelloMcFly 4y agoI'm not trying to be glib or intentionally controversial, but: is this a "market correction" for beef not really being as sustainable at recent consumption levels? Is it a bad thing if beef becomes significantly more expensive?
- shortstuffsushi 4y agoIf your industry isn't able to sustain a 6x increase on production cost, is that a market correction?
- chaorace 4y agoNot to pull the "facts don't care about feelings" card... but markets don't care about long-term sustainability so long as medium-term growth can be expected. Such a correction for unsustainable markets will eventually come, but not on a timescale relevant to current events. 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.
- tootie 4y agoYour electricity bill is probably correlated to heat wave more than inflation (depending on where you live). Also, the headline number is a very broad indicator. Inflation hits different sectors and different regions very differently. It's not a uniform force, it's derived from thousands of data points. Also, bear in mind that a "drop" is a drop in the rate of increase. Not an actual drop in prices which is something that never happens by design.
- post_break 4y agoMy electricity bill is tied to the Texas freeze recouping their costs and natural gas price spike.
- daoist_shaman 4y agoMy electric bill doubled and my electricity provider (Xcel Energy) added salt to the wound by suddenly terminating my Ecobee smart thermostat Eco+ cost savings program for the following reason: "not a single family home." Gee, thanks for discriminating against non-homeowners in the middle of all this.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- alliao 4y agoany insurance company with life insurance arm will need to increase to compensate
- bluedino 4y agoThe vehicle we bought cost over 10% what the same vehicle would have cost last year. 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.
- dawnerd 4y agoCat food has almost doubled and they’re still having problems stocking it.
- h2odragon 4y agoWe've stared buying the cheapest "people" tuna cans for our elderly cat; I think they've cheaped out too far on the cat food and its not really "food" anymore.
- illegalsmile 4y agoI was shocked when I went to buy my last 3.3lb bag of cat food and found it had gone up $4. My cats eat a 50/50 mix of baked chicken and dry food. At $3/lb chicken breast is way less expensive than the $7/lb dry food. I can only imagine how much people are spending on their medium to large dogs to feed them.
- slaw 4y agoWhere did you get a vehicle only 10% more expensive? New Jeep Cherokee Latitude 4x4 was $21k in January 2021. The cheapest new Cherokee now is $35k. 3 years old is $25k. Seattle,WA.
- thatfrenchguy 4y agoJeeps aren’t really a good benchmark for cars though, they’re an aspirational car, even the Cherokee.
- RC_ITR 4y agoOne thing about inflation is that it will never go back down. Best case scenario is it stops growing.
- meragrin_ 4y agoThis is the one thing which pisses me off when corporate brass justify not adjusting pay because "inflation is just transitory".
- werdnapk 4y agoDeflation can occur; it's rare, but it's not a never scenario.
- RC_ITR 4y agoIt has never occurred for more than a few months in The past 50 years and has never returned to a new equilibrium below where it was. This is also a data resolution problem. Sure we measure in months, but is that a reasonable resolution? Why not days? Years? Etc.
- jonnycomputer 4y agoOf course it goes down. Take a look at this chart, expand to 10y or max; inflation was about -0.75% in early 2020. In fact, it went into negative territory many times in the last decade. Prices go down during recessions, particularly. https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/inflation-rate-mom 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.
- honkkong420 4y agoBut our unemployment rates were so low in 2019, how could they have been lower with higher inflation?
- jliptzin 4y ago> My house insurance is up 30%. Shop around
- swayvil 4y agoOh and the quality is going down. Inching down the yogurt in the cup. Reducing nuts in the cereal. Nutty bars taste like plastic. Corners are being cut.
- EddySchauHai 4y agoElectricity is going up like mad in England too, they’ve recently changed the rules so suppliers can increase the price every 3 months instead of 6 months to allow more price changes.
- squeaky-clean 4y agoI was complaining about Oreo prices to my friend group on Discord literally last night! 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...
- jjav 4y agoI haven't been to fast foods in a handful of years but was in a hurry last week and stopped at BK. A large combo was a few coins short of $15! Whoa. This used to be about ~$6. 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.
- JJMcJ 4y agoWhen I do fast food these days I almost always get off the bargain menu (inflation means it's not the dollar menu any more). I assume they made money from it but I doubt anyplace could survive if all the orders were that cheap. 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.