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I cannot believe supermarkets these days, it is insane the increases in prices, I’ve seen £5 for a tube of normal toothpaste and £6 for a tiny Pizza that is so
by andy_ppp 4y ago
I cannot believe supermarkets these days, it is insane the increases in prices, I’ve seen £5 for a tube of normal toothpaste and £6 for a tiny Pizza that is sometimes available for £3. How people on modest salaries survive I don’t know.
Quite often I’m starting to notice dark patterns in pricing where things you normally didn’t worry about will have randomly increased by £2-3 and you get the checkout and you’ve spent £25-30 on next to nothing.
I wonder if inequality increases caused by printing trillions of dollars during COVID are anything to do with this inflation? Could it be that making the rich endless more wealthy and increasing asset prices is bad for society?
How do we fix this? Some people think redistribution of the increases the wealthy have had over COVID back to the poor would be a good move, but is this all inequality?
- kderbyma 4y agomost definitely. the wealthy are parasites beyond 1-2 magnitude of difference.
- za3faran 4y agoI'm not defending their actions, but they're exploiting the underlying broken and usurious financial system that is using fiat money that can be printed at will. The system is working as designed.
- UncleOxidant 4y agoI saw $6.99 for a pack of 12 flour tortillas yesterday. Could not believe it. At that price I'll try making my own.
- jlengrand 4y agoTrying to be positive in an ocean of poo, making your own tortillas is cheap, fast, kinda fun to do with kids and you can augment them for extra flavour. You can even batch prepare them in advance as long as they're not in contact with air. Many of those are the same. Pizza dough : once a month take 30 minutes preparing 10 rolls and in the freezer. And as a bonus, less chemicals in your system.
- bruce343434 4y agoBy far the most abundant chemical in any modern human is dihydrogen monoxide, I'm not sure that any hydrocarbon you will find in a tortilla is really even a comparison.
- jlengrand 4y agoHey, incidentally that very chemical is a major part of the recipe! My bad, English isn't my native language. I guess I meant additives?
- fknorangesite 4y ago> My bad Nah, it's just that the comment you're responding to is being insufferably pedantic. Your colloquial use of "chemicals" here is perfectly well understood.
- andy_ppp 4y agoExactly, I despise people who say things like "everything is made of chemicals" or "vegetables are carbohydrates" when they perfectly know exactly what I mean.
- ben_w 4y agoWhile the colloquial is well understood and @jlengrand shouldn't feel bad about using the word "chemical" in this way, on a nerd forum like this I think it's valid pedantry — our bodies are massively complex chemical reactions, and half the stuff I've borne witness to people in my life complaining about are genuinely useful one way or another, for example by preserving the food or making it taste better.
- fknorangesite 4y agoWhile it may be useful to call out mystical woo when we see it, in this context the only thing doing so succeeded in was derailing the conversation. We all understood the first time.
- symlinkk 4y agoI find comments like this weird, I never think about purchases that small. I honestly have no idea how much I pay for tortillas normally but $7 would not even be a blip on my mental radar
- willismichael 4y agoIt's just one banana. What could it cost, ten dollars?
- justsocrateasin 4y agoyou've never actually set foot in a supermarket, have you??
- Tade0 4y agoThis was a reference to some politician (I don't recall which) not knowing the price of a single banana.
- CamelCaseName 4y agoNo. This is a reference to the show "Arrested Development" Link to the scene: https://youtu.be/Nl_Qyk9DSUw https://youtu.be/Nl_Qyk9DSUw
- samstave 4y agoLove that scene. Can't seem to find it - but some time ago there was a short vid on why the price of bananas world wide was a good litmus on the shipping/economic trade - it went into detail on how banana prices could be used to measure certain stress points in global trade... I cant seem to find it though. However, in looking for it I found this, which is kind of interesting: >>"Are there more international laws on the trade of bananas than conventional weapons, like AK-47s?" >>"The short answer is astonishingly, yes. The global trade in bananas or banana plants is governed by at least three binding global agreements and the non-binding, though strictly adhered to, Codex food code. The arms trade is not governed by any binding global agreements." - https://politicsofpoverty.oxfamamerica.org/comparing-bananas-to-the-global-arms-trade/ https://politicsofpoverty.oxfamamerica.org/comparing-bananas...
- chasd00 4y agoon a tangent, either buy fresh tortillas (the package should be very warm, almost hot) or make your own. Get some good tortillas and you'll want the others outlawed as a crime against humanity. I'm fairly anti-government but i would be ok if a law was passed in the fine state of Texas requiring all restaurants to make their own tortillas fresh when ordered.
- tonguetrainer 4y agoInteresting point. With high inflation and many professions being made obsolete by AI, cooking and baking authentic cultural foods at home may become the new obsession.
- tomxor 4y agoFlour and sugar based products are both absurdly high profit margin and the cause of the obesity pandemic (not a coincidence), you could make your own stuff for cheap, or just cut so the majority of flour based products from your diet - either option is a positive direction.
- tiborsaas 4y agoThis weekend I got a pack of 4 for $4.18 in Budapest ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
- steve76 4y ago[dead]
- uejfiweun 4y agoPaid $5.50 for a freaking bag of flaming hot cheetos yesderday. It's insane.
- Nifty3929 4y agoThe fix is to produce more stuff. It's that simple. It might not be easy though. It would require us to focus on production, remove barriers, streamline regulations, encourage and actively celebrate production. It seems these days we're ambivalent toward the production of stuff, or even antagonistic to it in many cases. So we have less stuff. Combine this with giving people more money and you get inflation.
- prottog 4y ago> It seems these days we're ambivalent toward the production of stuff, or even antagonistic to it in many cases. I cannot emphasize this enough. Wealthy Western nations have been wealthy for so long that people know how to cut up the pie in different sizes more so than they know how to bake more.
- scoofy 4y agoThe negative moralizing of other people existing is genuinely out of control in California. From housing, to transportation, to climate change, to conservation, the major cities just causally like to pretend that if we can may other people go away, it'll solve our problems. It's thrown around causally like it's the state of nature, or an actual workable solution to anything.
- rhacker 4y agoI think the basis for this feeling is that people keep moving here. We feel it when traffic gets worse, etc... Not really sure IF there's a real solution. The more people there are, the worse things get in small spaces. We have an entire country that is mostly empty.
- zeroonetwothree 4y agoCalifornia is mostly empty too. It's larger than Japan and has almost 3x fewer people.
- oatmeal1 4y ago> I wonder if inequality increases caused by printing trillions of dollars during COVID are anything to do with this inflation? Could it be that making the rich endless more wealthy and increasing asset prices is bad for society? Making billionaires more wealthy doesn't affect inflation much because they are already consuming as much as they want. That money will just increase the price of stocks and bonds - whatever billionaires invest in. Giving every average Joe a thousand more dollars will increase spending by nearly that amount per person and prices of goods will increase. Giving money to people who need money is part of the solution, but the biggest part of the solution is making sure human productivity (GDP) is going to make things that make people's lives better.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- manojlds 4y agoWhy is no one talking about Brexit in this whole equation? Yeah world is facing the brunt, but UK more so.
- kumoflow 4y agoBecause all of europe is in the same or worse place? No matter how much remainers want to blame brexit for everything, it isnt’t always the case. Central europe is around or a few points less than the um while easter and western europe are higher https://www.reddit.com/r/europe/comments/11zwtif/annual_inflation_rate_feb_2023_food_and/ https://www.reddit.com/r/europe/comments/11zwtif/annual_infl...
- manojlds 4y agoThat's ok, but UK literally ran out of tomatoes, eggs and many other items
- redeeman 4y agoand in denmark the news cycle has just included how all pharmacies are sold out of certain types of diabetes drugs... which is worse?
- vsl 4y agoCentral Europe: eggs price skyrocketed earlier this year (= supply shortage, aka “ran out”, due to bird flu prevention orders). Medical supplies shortage and running out of some medicines completely.
- realjhol 4y agoThis isnt true though. The remainer narrative is being falsified in real time.
- varispeed 4y agoSome supermarkets also have predatory practices to coerce people into using their data harvesting programs. Like you pay £1.5 for essential product if you scan a card otherwise it is £3. These should be made illegal.
- lozenge 4y agoIt's not even about the data harvesting, it's because the £1.50 is a "promotional" price and that means they no longer need to display the unit price.
- jseliger 4y agoIt would help to remove many regulatory barriers to building housing and commercial structures of any kind: https://www.centreforcities.org/publication/the-housebuilding-crisis/ https://www.centreforcities.org/publication/the-housebuildin...
- tokamak-teapot 4y agoTwo of the most well-known toothpaste brands in the UK are still selling their most 'basic' toothpastes for 100ml for £1, which I don't think is much of a rise on what it's been for the last few years (I think I used to get 125ml for that price). People on modest salaries either don't spot the cheaper, just-as-good toothpaste that's not as prominent, they think that it's not as good as the ones with lists of all the great things they're supposed to do, or they aren't feeling the squeeze enough to seek it out. If you drop into an independent chemist you might notice that sometimes the only toothpaste they stock is the 'basic' one, because their customers are price-sensitive, so that's all they'll buy. Going rate for pizza is around 60p/100g, with a larger than average Aldi 'Meat Feast' pizza coming in at £2.19, which is 39p/100g. Again, if you're on a 'modest salary', you pick the cheaper products or pick the supermarkets which only really sell the cheaper products. I'm not saying that prices aren't going up, just that closer to the 'survival' line, there is much less room to increase prices, because people aren't at the point of choosing based on preference, so you can't rely on them switching to a slightly cheaper option from your artificially differentiated product line (yes, you, Colgate-Palmolive). They'll just be forced to stop buying your products altogether.
- louloulou 4y ago> most 'basic' toothpastes for 100ml for £1, which I don't think is much of a rise on what it's been for the last few years (I think I used to get 125ml for that price). Going from 125mL to 100mL for the same price => 20% price inflation.
- hanoz 4y agoThe proportion of my local supermarket given over to toothpaste is mind blowing. It's like the beginnings of some sort of Brontitallian Shoe Event Horizon. For what is essentially just a mild abrasive plus fluoride, the baffling array of variations on a theme on display, mostly from the same few fmcg conglomerates anyway, is just ridiculous.
- moltar 4y agoIt’s probably a strategy. They overwhelm you with choice. So you end up with some simple heuristic like more expensive is better. Get something middle of the pack and you are still overpaying 200%.
- mrkwse 4y agoFor me the actual dark pattern in pricing is when prices remain fixed but quantity/volume really reduces. It's subtle on the aisle, but if you use online shopping it's blatant when the product you usually order is no longer available and it suggests an item that is identical in terms of the product it is and price, but has a glaring reduction in weight.
- mbar84 4y agoaka. "shrinkflation": Same price, less product.
- datavirtue 4y agoSort of. My Noosa is still 8oz but it is thinner. Now that's some bean countin' bullshit.
- iancmceachern 4y agoThat stuff is so good, best yogurt ever
- GeekyBear 4y ago> I’ve seen £5 for a tube of normal toothpaste and £6 for a tiny Pizza that is sometimes available for £3. How people on modest salaries survive I don’t know. I took up cooking from scratch as a hobby a couple of decades ago. I highly recommend it. After a bit of a learning curve, it's cheaper, tastier. and better for you than highly processed foodlike substances.
- lifeisstillgood 4y agoI have learnt to unpack a few things here. Firstly cooking from scratch is absolutely a life skill and nominally cheaper. But food is also a class issue. Those with time to spare (ie rich) can indulge in for example "stuffing a mushroom" - Shirley Conran famously recanted twenty years of writing cookery lifestyle books exhorting women to become corden bleu cooks by saying life was to short to stuff a mushroom - and that is kind of my point. I mean Gordon bloody Ramsey does not prepare food the way he tells you to in his cookbooks - it's too slow and inefficient. All the recipies I love to cook - getting the temperature of the linguini just right before pouring over eggs and pecorino for carbonara for instance - is frankly, a nightmare nutrition wise (even if it's a hit kid wise) and a plate of chicken breast and five different veg and fruit for after is waaaay better - but how many recipients books will do that, how many blog posts extoll boiled peas. Maybe we would learn from the staff of life - Bread. In the first weeks of lockdown, flour vanished from shelves - obviously because of a shortage but mostly because flour was diverted from domestic use to go to actual bakers and factories who could efficiently mass produce the staple of life that was then shipped to our supermarket shelves to eat. Yes there were bakers running triple shifts, logistic planners sleeping in the office and HVV drivers going every which way. But in the end feeding millions is like Gorden Ramsey says - if you do it like the instagram post says, you are doing it wrong
- b3nji 4y agoNa, that's crazy talk. Of course the government printing oodles of money has absolutely nothing to do with inflation. oBViOUSLy tHE rUSsIANs dID it ;p
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- notfed 4y agoI don't think "randomly increasing prices" counts as a dark pattern. It's just a plain and simple economic pattern. The only reason some companies are able to get away with this is because too many people shop mindlessly without checking prices. The solution is for everyone to pay attention to prices when we shop: the brands who jump their prices up will have 0 customers. I'm not saying it's easy, and perhaps grocery store price labelling isn't maximally effective, but when we shop frugally, we actually benefit not only ourselves, but each other.