9 ms·

Shrinkflation is all over. Burger buns at fast food places were more dense 20 years ago. The small burgers had 1/8th pound patties instead of the current 1/10th

by smolder 2mo ago

Shrinkflation is all over. Burger buns at fast food places were more dense 20 years ago. The small burgers had 1/8th pound patties instead of the current 1/10th pound. It's hard to find a product that hasn't gotten worse or more expensive, even adjusted for inflation.

oneeyedpigeon 2mo ago
> It's hard to find a product that hasn't gotten worse or more expensive, even adjusted for inflation. Hmm. I think it's just as easy to find products that haven't gotten worse or more expensive as it is to find ones that have. For every mars bar, there's a video game.
- tosti 2mo ago
  Video games of yore were actual games you could buy and play with friends. You had a physical copy and never had to renew a subscription, watch ads, or pay anything extra to unlock content. Most games didn't even have a separate launcher. Just run it and play. Updates, when they existed, were small. And no lootboxes, no gambling. They had hidden maps or levels, so it actually was fun to play the same game repeatedly. I can't fathom why you'd pick video games as your example ffs.
  - smolder 2mo ago
    The smart tv formula gets applied everywhere. Make it cheaper by making more money through annoying/spying on customers.
  - oneeyedpigeon 2mo ago
    > Video games of yore were actual games you could buy and play with friends. You had a physical copy and never had to renew a subscription, watch ads, or pay anything extra to unlock content. Most games didn't even have a separate launcher. Just run it and play. Updates, when they existed, were small. That describes at least 90% of the games I play today. I should have gone with any electrical item, tbh; that would probably have flown here without any dissent. But video games that are nowadays almost always one or two orders of magnitude 'better value' while being approximately half the price they were back in the nineties are still a legitimate example, I think.
  - anticrymactic 2mo ago
    > Video games of yore were actual games you could buy and play with friends. While this is _true_, it's hardly a good-faith interpretation. The original Mario Bros was around $40 on release. Mostly sold as a bundle with the NES itself around $100. That's $350 in today's money. Oddly around the same as the switch 1 on release ($299) + BOTW ($60) Compare the "value" of NES + Mario Bros with Switch 1 + Breath of the Wild. Yes Nintendo can take one of those away from you, that's despicable, but the "product" has shrunk in no way.
    - tosti 2mo ago
      Cherry picking isn't good faith.
- georgemcbay 2mo ago
  > For every mars bar, there's a video game. The economics of software (including video games) are entirely different than candy bars or burgers as the marginal cost of each "unit" is effectively zero.
  - oneeyedpigeon 2mo ago
    Fair enough; pretend I said "a computer" instead.
    - georgemcbay 2mo ago
      > Fair enough; pretend I said "a computer" instead. That's a better example, though the "continually better, faster & cheaper" days for computers (and consumer electronics broadly) have recently been heavily disrupted by the current AI rush. Guess we'll find out how temporary or permanent this is.
- xingped 2mo ago
  I think the implication is specifically for physical products. Video games aren't standardized sizes or materials and you don't somehow download 20% less content today than you did downloading the same game 5 or 10 years ago. (Ignoring some obvious outliers like games/content pulled due to licensing expirations - which are really stupid.)
  - bluefirebrand 2mo ago
    > Video games aren't standardized sizes or materials and you don't somehow download 20% less content today than you did downloading the same game 5 or 10 years ago 20 years ago you bought a disk and the entire game was on there. 10 years ago you bought a disk and you have a massive day 1 patch to get the rest of the game. Today you buy a physical box with no actual disk in it, only a download code! I'm exaggerating a little bit about today's situation but not by much...
    - xingped 2mo ago
      That's not the same and that's what I'm trying to point out. A Mars bar is still a Mars bar. If you're paying more and/or getting less than you did X number of years ago, that is a simple apples to apples comparison. Since games are all, by nature, different, any comparison is apples to oranges. You can talk about specific features such as the existence of battle passes, microtransactions, loot boxes, etc., but every game's implementation is different. If I pay $10 for a game and play it for 400hrs and pay $40 for another game and only play it for 50hrs, is one necessarily worse or better than the other by that metric? For example, I've played Outer Wilds significantly less than many other games that I've enjoyed far less, but I would still rank Outer Wilds as one of my all-time top favorite games. However that's very subjective to my experience. Others would disagree. The point is, video games is a very bad point of comparison here and very obviously not the kind of product the OP is referring to.
      - wolvoleo 2mo ago
        A mars bar is probably not the same thing it was in 1986 either. Recipes get tweaked constantly to reduce ingredient cost (and usually marked with "new and improved recipe!!" Lol
- AshamedBadger56 2mo ago
  Video games are honestly a pretty bad example. 10-20 years ago, you'd buy your video game, and it was a complete item, that you owned and could play for as long as you didn't damage it. Once you were done with it, you could lend it to friends, or sell it and recoup a decent chunk of money for the next game you wanted. Now with everything digital only, you don't even own your games, your ability to play it is at the whims of mega-corporations. You can't resell it to recoup money, or lend it to a friend. Most games start on day 1 as essentially a beta, with tons of huge updates required to get them in a decent state, loot boxes, microtransactions, live service games taking over the entire market share, RAMmagedden driving up console prices post-launch, etc etc etc etc. They are definitely prettier now and have fancy lighting effects though.
  - oneeyedpigeon 2mo ago
    > Video games are honestly a pretty bad example. 10-20 years ago, you'd buy your video game, and it was a complete item, that you owned and could play for as long as you didn't damage it. Once you were done with it, you could lend it to friends, or sell it and recoup a decent chunk of money for the next game you wanted. As I said to another commenter, that applies to many of the games I buy today. OK, not quite all since I do buy some titles digitally, but that is my choice. > They are definitely prettier now and have fancy lighting effects though. And are much better in terms of accessibility, quality-of-life in general, scope, etc.
  - joegibbs 2mo ago
    There are a ton more games now, you could easily get one with similar graphics/gameplay to a 2006 game for much cheaper.
    - account42 2mo ago
      No you can't. Big studios don't make games with 2006 graphics and indies don't make the games you could get in 2006 except for the smaller scale ones. Of course games are a cop out when discussing inflation in the first place because they have zero marginal cost to produce and the market has massively expanded - if their prices had kept up with inflation something would be VERY wrong.
- Xirdus 2mo ago
  Subjectively, video games did get both worse and more expensive over the last 20 years. But putting that aside, the ratio isn't 1:1. I'd expect the ratio to be at least 20:1 - you can name at most 1 thing that got better/cheaper for every 20 things that got worse/more expensive.
  - oneeyedpigeon 2mo ago
    I'd like to see your evidence for video games getting more expensive. Even if they were like-for-like (I'll make a case that the average video game is a far better product now than it was in the 90s), they are approximately the same absolute price today that they were 30-40 years ago, without adjusting for inflation.
    - bluefirebrand 2mo ago
      > they are approximately the same absolute price today that they were 30-40 years ago, without adjusting for inflation. You used to get a lot of stuff in a game box that wasn't just the game though. Manuals were often very detailed, arguably works of art in their own right. Also the cost of producing and shipping games is way lower online than it was for physical copies. Companies all used to have to develop their own engines and tooling to build games, that cost is mostly just gone with Unity and Unreal now. Last and definitely not least, there's way more competition in the gaming industry now, and that tends to drive prices down.
    - cogman10 2mo ago
      > Even if they were like-for-like That's the thing, the style of game release of the 90s is all but dead. Sure you can still find indy studios releasing in a 90s style, but you can't find the big players doing that. Now a lot of the big name games have switched to either a freemium model or a pay to play model. You don't simply buy a game like Overwatch, you have to get a battle pass to keep playing. And you don't ultimately own overwatch, once blizzard is done with it, the game is over and you can no longer play it. Then there's the fact that to be competitive, these games often sell items and loot boxes. If you want to not always die, you end up needing to buy these perks. That is a worst experience designed to milk money out of players as much as possible, more than what you'd be paying adjusted for inflation. The entire genre of FPS is like this now. Unless you play the old games, you basically cannot get the old experience of setting up a server, maybe letting it be open to the public, and just playing a game with friends. Instead is a bunch of random dumb shit that you have to deal with.
- adamrezich 2mo ago
  What alternate reality are you living in where the video games industry isn't a charred husk of what it was, just over a decade and a half ago? What's it like to live in a world where competent AAA studios are still plentiful, and the legacy studios successfully passed down knowledge and ethos to new hires, so as to avoid becoming skinsuit versions of their past selves? How is it, living in a world where several AAA blockbuster games are still being released annually, with none of them being remakes of decade-plus-old titles? Is there any wisdom in how your reality's AAA video game industry kept the stride they built up to in the 2000s, into the 2010s, that you could share with us, so we can hopefully rebuild the smoldering crater of a AAA video game industry we have in our reality?
  - oneeyedpigeon 2mo ago
    > What alternate reality are you living in where the video games industry isn't a charred husk of what it was, a decade and a half ago? A world that contains Breath of the Wild, Blue Prince, Balatro, Mario Kart World, (you get the point—there are lots of good games).
    - adamrezich 2mo ago
      Two of those are Nintendo first-party games—and one of them was released nine years ago. Is “the AAA video game industry” just Nintendo, to you?
      - oneeyedpigeon 2mo ago
        Nine years ago, precisely because you said: > a decade and a half ago? For me personally, the AAA game industry is entirely Nintendo, yes. Half the games I mentioned are cross-platform, though; I know they're not 'AAA', but I don't think this discussion needs to be limited purely to AAAs. And, as I mentioned, there are plenty more games that I could have included.
        adamrezich 2mo ago
        > For me personally, the AAA game industry is entirely Nintendo, yes. There's nothing wrong with being a fan of one company, but pretending that going from a world where there were many high-quality AAA video games released each year from many different studios to what we have today, just because Nintendo is doing alright and you like Nintendo—when the topic at hand is specifically “the video games industry” as a whole—is simply asinine. AAA studios were once the force driving technology and game design forward, regularly starting fresh new IPs that would go on to become cherished by fans. That simply does not happen anymore. What was the last fresh new Nintendo IP that went on to become a beloved recurring success—Splatoon (eleven years ago)? Nintendo deserves plenty of credit for actively working against stagnation more than literally everyone else, but they are completely peerless in this regard. Everyone else ended up falling into a death spiral of churning out remakes and/or being absorbed into Microsoft and then stagnating until death. There is no longer a vibrant industry full of technical innovation and a genuine eye toward craftsmanship, quality, and generally making new fun things to play. The indie game scene picked up some of the slack on the innovation front, to great success, yet almost none of the successful indie studios (off the top of my head, Facepunch is the only exception I can think of) have transmuted said success into building a studio with a culture focused on exploring the frontier of the medium. Hell, half of the big indie successes these days make their millions in Early Access, predicated upon the implied promise that their Early Access success will permit them to substantially build out the game beyond their Early Access offering, only to completely and utterly fail to do so in the end. Anyone who thinks the video games industry is in a good place in 2026 is completely delusional and/or simply ignoring relatively recent history and pretending that things have always been as dire as they are today. Also Mario Kart World was eighty bucks at launch dude (I had to look it up to be sure, but, yeah—I totally paid eighty US dollars for that game), and it's still selling for eighty bucks today, so, your entire position in this discussion is completely invalid on its face.
- fl4regun 2mo ago
  TV's for one, have become insanely cheap. You can get 4k TVs for like, nothing, especially after inflation adjustments from the 2010s. Bigger panels, brighter screens, too bad we started shoving stupid and annoying OSes and Ads in them.
  - bluescrn 2mo ago
    TV quality isn't what it used to be, though. Got a fairly expensive LG OLED and after 5 years it's developing clusters of dead pixels down one edge. And even if the hardware doesn't fail/degrade, the software is often enshittified (ads pushed to smart TVs)
    - servo_sausage 2mo ago
      OLEDs are an odd example... Their warranties are generally just as good, and the lifespan due to burn in is still improving.
- insane_dreamer 2mo ago
  show me a modern video game that is better than Myst or Riven (in the same genre) I even prefer the original CS over most of today's FPS games.
  - ChickeNES 2mo ago
    I'd rather play Candy Crush than Myst, Myst was boring as fuck.
    - em-bee 2mo ago
      i loved myst online, the multiplayer version. it's still going actually. game preferences vary.
      - ChickeNES 2mo ago
        > game preferences vary. True! But for me Myst was one of those super-hyped-up titles that failed to live up to its reputation. And I'm not a youngun, I started on NES/SNES! I'm not convinced GP isn't relying more on nostalgia than a real sampling of current titles.
        insane_dreamer 2mo ago
        fair point -- graybeard here (without the beard :)) I did stop gaming ~15 years ago, but I have tried to find good games for my (now teenage) kids, so I have tried to research new games even if I haven't played them myself. I haven't found anything on the level of Myst/Riven/Exile. You know what else they don't make anymore? Good split/screen coop games, like Splinter Cell. Everything is online multiplayer, but no more being able to sit on a couch and play together (other than Nintendo games, racing games). Same for good ol' LAN games. And sure, it's convenient to just game from home, but there's nothing like everyone lugging their boxes over to your place and setting them up on the dining room table for a pizza-fueled all nighter :)
    - insane_dreamer 2mo ago
      ok, that's just mean :)
- bluescrn 2mo ago
  Retro gaming is rising in popularity for good reasons. And it's not purely nostalgia. A lot of people aren't enjoying modern games (with modern monetization)
  - account42 2mo ago
    It's not just monetization. Modern games are a mass market product with all the fun parts shaved off.
jonnycoder 2mo ago
Technology in the form of computers, cell phones, and AI have been getting cheaper and better. Access to information is another one but that requires agency to take advantage of and get the benefits. This could be personal health, starting/running your own business, using ai to help create ads for your business, etc.
- bix6 2mo ago
  Nobody cares that their TV is cheaper when it now smashes ads in your face while using your bandwidth to serve botnets and sends a heartbeat even when offline. Everything that actually matters, like good healthy food or youth sports, is increasingly expensive or shrinkflated.
  - inigyou 2mo ago
    It's because of rent. Rent keeps going up and this gets passed on to all people who buy things, live, or work, but it rarely flows the other way - rentiers spend all their rent acquiring more rent, not on productive things. And so you have this constant leeching away from the real economy.
    - bix6 2mo ago
      The rent seeking in this era really is off the charts
- globalnode 2mo ago
  > using ai to help create ads for your business whenever i see this i drives me away, i'd rather buy from a business that drew stick figure ads by hand. funniest thing i saw was an ai food ad and someone asked if the ai makes the food as well. the staff were actually miffed lol.
  - WalterBright 2mo ago
    > i'd rather buy from a business that drew stick figure ads by hand People have complained my stick figures look "unprofessional".
asveikau 2mo ago
I'd be curious to know, with the reduction in size, if calorie density went up. Because that would fit a lot of people's perception of how food is going: you get less, but what you do get is worse for you.
- leoc 2mo ago
  I'd be relatively surprised if the Mars bar's calorie density went up after it was ruined in 2002. The old Mars bar was a beast: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49245791 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49245791 .
  - asveikau 2mo ago
    That's one reason I phrased it as density rather than weight or a raw count of calories. For density we would have the weight as a denominator. It's conceivable that if they've removed better quality ingredients, calories per gram of weight could go up.
- bluefirebrand 2mo ago
  A lot of people feel like stuff tastes worse than it used to, too That's obviously hard to measure because you can't do a blind taste test of a 20 year ago candy bar and one today, and people's tastes change as they get older. But worse ingredients making a worse flavor is possible too
  - TeriyakiBomb 2mo ago
    Over here in the UK at the moment you can. They’ve recently made huge changes to a lot of chocolate products in the space of a year or two. Especially cadburys which is now just at the legal definition of chocolate over here. Any lower and they legally have to call it “chocolate flavoured” which has already recently happened to a bunch of classic lunchbox chocolate bars. So shit.
- mschild 2mo ago
  Potentially as a side effect. A lot of ingredients are switched to cheaper, often more processed substitutes. For example, vegtable oil instead of olive oil, fructose corn syrup instead of honey or sugar. Beyond that chainging composition to reduce amount of expensive ingredients. Think Pesto Genovese which is originally Parmesan, Basil, pine nuts, etc. Instead of only pine nuts, you now include other nuts for texture and only add a smaller amount for flavour (and worse add flavoring so customers don't notice too quickly). https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/22486545/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/22486545/
Razengan 2mo ago
What the fuck are people doing about it?
- inigyou 2mo ago
  There was that guy who killed that billionaire, but it didn't change anything long-term.
  - deleted 2mo ago
    [deleted]
- bix6 2mo ago
  Crying online! You’d think competitive brands could launch to bring joy but everyone is so cash strapped that those brands lose since the mega corps price cheaper even if it’s worse/shrinkflated. Or they just get bought and rolled into the oligopoly!
foxyv 2mo ago
This is never more apparent than when you start making your own stuff from scratch. The comparison is stark.
- 8by3 2mo ago
  Totally, a huge swathe of things are better and cheaper when your make them yourself, you just need the time. Shame we've given up all our free time to work so we can buy worse alternatives.
  - GlacierFox 2mo ago
    For a lot of my friends it's not about time. They'll proclaim their lack of time to make a simple meal, doom scroll for hours then order take-away then doom scroll half and hour while waiting for it to come.
    - customguy 2mo ago
      What about the rationalisations of those who cut corners and wine to make even more profit when they're already so rich it's become a health issue for them? How is it the sole responsibility of your friends to work around that? The idea is basically that it's "just the way it is" that the food we can buy in supermarkets, that is made in factories, that GIGANTIC amounts of real estate and logistics and energy are devoted to, that is made cheaper than it would be otherwise (and that is true even if it was awesome quality and mega healthy -- it would be more expensive, but less expensive than doing it yourself, economics of scale etc.) sucks, is unhealthy, you "shouldn't eat that". Just buy some veggies and do it yourself. It's not so hard to plant some tomatoes, either! Nevermind people in private jets doing airshows... I just can't with how lazy my friends are. It would take them 30 minutes max. It's not that you're wrong, of course. Both "sides" matter, and you always should mostly focus on what you control. But at the same time, it's better to punch up than kick down or sideways.
      - GlacierFox 2mo ago
        Unintelligible. Re-write this into something coherent so I can respond if you like.
HumblyTossed 2mo ago
Ice cream is 1.5 qt not 1/2 gallon. I don't know what they put into pizza "dough" but it's not real flour. Everything has been spreadsheeted to death.
- buran77 2mo ago
  To be honest, for some things, getting a smaller serving and/or higher price is a blessing in disguise - health-wise at least. Same with soda servings where very large cups or bottles encourage higher consumption.
  - insane_dreamer 2mo ago
    except that soda is (sadly) one case where the cups have gotten bigger. did they even have 32 oz "extra extra gulp" size 30 years ago?
    - philipkglass 2mo ago
      The 32 oz "Big Gulp" was introduced by 7-11 in 1976 in Southern California: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Gulp https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Gulp Even bigger sizes arrived in the 1980s: Called Big Gulp because it was initially the largest such drink available at any retailer, 7-Eleven eventually introduced larger sizes. In 1986, they introduced the 44-US-fluid-ounce (1,300 ml) Super Big Gulp, followed by the 64-US-fluid-ounce (1,900 ml) Double Gulp in 1989 (later reduced to 50-US-fluid-ounce (1,500 ml))...
    - Merad 2mo ago
      Oh yes, the 1990s was the height of massive fast food drinks. Wendy's had 32 oz "biggie" drinks and a 40+ oz "great biggie". McDonalds had "super size" tho I don't recall its volume. Most of those got renamed by the mid 00's and eventually downsized.
    - phil21 2mo ago
      They were more absurd in the 90's. You'd have the gas station 64oz reusable cups you could use to do unlimited refills for a dollar. "Super Size" was a 90's thing as well, if I recall. It was basically an arms race of which company could provide the most ridiculously large portions of a cheap product like soda or fries. Then the PR swung in the 00's due to the obesity epidemic and such stuff was silently rolled back. Likely for both PR and cost reasons. The 32oz drink stuck around though pretty much everywhere.
palmotea 2mo ago
> Shrinkflation is all over. Burger buns at fast food places were more dense 20 years ago. The small burgers had 1/8th pound patties instead of the current 1/10th pound. It's hard to find a product that hasn't gotten worse or more expensive, even adjusted for inflation. Isn't capitalism great? The common pattern with everything seems to be large companies degrading size, quality, and features of products in user-hostile ways. IMHO, we need pretty strict regulation specifying standard product sizes and minimum quality. It would kill shrinkflation and also make alternatives more comparable. On a related note: I recently listened to this (very good) podcast (https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-hidden-supply-chain-making-every-menu-feel-familiar/id1056200096?i=1000733450787 https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-hidden-supply-chai..., https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-10-25/the-hidden-supply-chain-making-every-menu-feel-familiar https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-10-25/the-hidde...) that stated pretty bluntly that food in the US is also more expensive and lower quality than food in Europe.
- deleted 2mo ago
  [deleted]
- jelsisi 2mo ago
  Why regulate this when you can just search out and buy better products? My farmers market has great deserts.
  - quadyeast 2mo ago
    With desserts you come back for seconds.
- slopinthebag 2mo ago
  Eh, it’s more that degrading size and quality is used to mask the effects of inflation. You can absolutely find high quality products, they’re just more expensive - to some extent, they’re a more realistic price.
  - wolvesechoes 2mo ago
jjtheblunt 2mo ago
> It's hard to find a product that hasn't gotten worse or more expensive, even adjusted for inflation. computers i think are more affordable now than even 20 years ago, in bang for buck
- fourthark 2mo ago
  The exception that proves the rule.
  - Gormo 2mo ago
    The phrase "exception that proves the rule" refers to an apparent exception to the rule's outputs actually being explained by it having divergent inputs, i.e. if you claim P=>Q, then the exception that proves the rule would be an instance of ~Q=>~P. What's different about computers that makes this applicable here?
    - nkrisc 2mo ago
      What they likely mean is that pointing to one exception that is notable only because it violates the general trend is not evidence against the trend.
    - vidarh 2mo ago
      The term is often also used simply as claiming the existence of a rule by claiming the exception. It's one of those terms where I am pretty confident that I see the original use more rarely than the technically incorrect variations to the point I'd hesitate to call them incorrect any more.
      - vlovich123 2mo ago
        > This meaning of the phrase, which for Fowler is the original and clearest meaning ... This argument states if an exception exists or has to be stated, then this exception proves that there must be some rule to which the case is an exception So no, OP used the correct definition and no wide spread usage uses ~Q=>~P. That's a weird logical formulation that was randomly concocted. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exception_that_proves_the_rule https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exception_that_proves_the_rule Said another way: Rule: It's hard to find a product that hasn't gotten worse or more expensive, even adjusted for inflation. Exception: computers i think are more affordable now than even 20 years ago, in bang for buck This proves the rule because if it's an exception to the rule, therefore the rule must exist in the first place.
deleted 2mo ago
[deleted]
harrall 2mo ago
McDonald’s has been 1/10th pound since 1950.
- PaulDavisThe1st 2mo ago
  Citation not required, but it would likely help make your case...
  - throwaway2037 2mo ago
    I was surprised too by this claim, but a quick Google search turned up this tweet on X: https://x.com/McFranchisee/status/1998885781319082342 https://x.com/McFranchisee/status/1998885781319082342 > From pretty much day one, the size of a @McDonalds beef patty has been 10:1 (10 patties per pound of beef). It still follows this standard today. Same size. > There are no fillers, preservatives, organs, bones, or anything like that, just 100% pure USDA beef. The box doesn’t even need an ingredient label; it simply states 100% Beef.
jasondigitized 2mo ago
Televisions are clearly an exception to this rule and I would like to know why.
- georgeburdell 2mo ago
  China
- hnuser123456 2mo ago
  Because TVs can be made to show ads, especially if the manufacturer themselves partners with an ad network.
- wizzwizz4 2mo ago
  Does your television not take 10 seconds to start, 2 seconds to respond to button inputs, request internet access, try to sell you things, and exfiltrate your personal data? If not: where are you getting your televisions?
  - yumraj 2mo ago
    No it doesn’t. Why? Because I don’t use it as a TV AND a set top box. I use it just as a TV that is connected to an AppleTV And before when I was using the inbuilt smart TV, I had disabled various android services related to ads on my Sony TV, and run pi-hole that blocks ads.
  - phil21 2mo ago
    Nope. Takes maybe 3-5 seconds to start from when I press any button on my Shield remote. HDMI CEC autoselects the input and everything reliably about 98% of the time. Once in a while (every couple months) I need to reboot my shield which is annoying. Faster than my old CRTs would warm up and get to full color output, degauss, etc. Better experience than some chunky expensive universal remote using IR blasters to coordinate it all. Far better than anything I ran in the 90's or even 00's. 2025 model of the latest and greatest LG OLED. TV not connected to Internet, because who on HN would actually do that? Even with your chosen set top box it's cheaper than ever before. It's on you if you choose to use the built-in Internet players. Those effectively come for free and you get what you pay for in that regard. No different than the 90's or 00's buying a cable box, VCR, or DVD player. Cheaper actually, since a Shield or Apple TV replaces all those devices into one quite relatively affordable device. TVs overall are far better quality in terms of user experience. And I'm someone who has always had an overkill home theatre setup I spend far too much money on and upgrade far too often. It's only gotten better performance for dollar my entire life. I suppose if you enjoy channel flipping it might be worse? But that's not something I really do much of, so hard to comment there.
mrbestregards 2mo ago
They're a 1/10th of a pound now?! In 2009, I worked at McDonalds and they were definitely 1/8th pound patties! Holy moly.
- SoftTalker 2mo ago
  No, McDonald's has always been 10:1 for the "regular" burgers, I think forever but certainly back to the early 1980s when I worked there.
somat 2mo ago
Companies hate raising prices, or more specifically customers hate it when prices are raised so companies don't like to do it. especially in foods. As such the go-to dance to keep up with inflation is to reduce the size while keeping the price the same as long as possible, when this becomes too noticeable the size is returned to original the price is increased and a big 20% more is added to the package. Repeat as needed. Note that this is the most charitable interpretation where the customer deception is fairly minor(inflation happens, gotta sneak that price increase in there some how) Stuff like deceptive packaging(make it look like there is more than is actually present) punts it into the outright evil category.
- Night_Thastus 2mo ago
  Yep. People blame companies, but ultimately they are doing what the customer 'wants'. Same with things like separate fees for credit cards, or shipping. Customers don't like seeing an extra fee, so companies roll it all together - even if it often means they end up paying more in the long run.
  - 8note 2mo ago
    the customer doesnt want higher prices or smaller items. This is a dirty trick to try and make customers not notice that the quality is worse ultimately the company is taking part in the government's goal to keep a certain level of inflation, rather than just its own desire to screw customers and make the number go up. If the government wasnt in on it, there would be regulations around shrinkflation
    - Night_Thastus 2mo ago
      Companies like Mars, Inc don't care a hoot about what the level of inflation is. They care about their shareholders, who care about stock growth. Anything else is completely and totally irrelevant for them. Higher prices -> customer unhappy -> less sales -> stock price go down Smaller bars -> hopefully customer doesn't notice -> same sales -> stock OK That's the only logic in here. The prices of the ingredients have gone up, so they're forced with that choice.
xp84 2mo ago
The burger patties were absolutely not 1/8 pound. I can assure you from experience as a Professional McDonald's Worker in 2003 that those were 10:1 patties then as well. I can also vouch for the same from another major burger chain circa 2001. I'm sure they shrink everything possible, but interestingly they haven't been shaving down the beef quantities for some reason.
- therealdrag0 2mo ago
  Didn’t they also have filler then remove it to be 100% beef at some point?
  - FireBeyond 2mo ago
    Only after attempts to call one of their suppliers or processors "100% Beef" failed.
    - sandcat_ 2mo ago
      https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/mcdonalds-100-beef/ https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/mcdonalds-100-beef/
    - hydrogen7800 2mo ago
      I recall a similar claim regarding pop music compilation CDs advertised as being performed by "The Original Cast", which was really a group by that name playing covers of popular songs. Or another being "Made in USA", where Usa was a city in Korea.
      - b112 2mo ago
        "Genuine diamonds" sold fake diamonds after trademarking the name, I thibk. However a decade later I read about them losibg a lawsuit. This tricks don't work any more.
        tancop 2mo ago
fiftyacorn 2mo ago
Its not just shrinkflation for these mars bars. Its sugar tax to reduce obesity
bluescrn 2mo ago
There's also 'Drinkflation', the ABV of beers being reduced. (Maybe it's mostly a UK thing due to the tax system, weaker beer = less tax) Pretty sad state of things when simple pleasures like beer or chocolate are hit so hard by enshittification.
- driverdan 2mo ago
  That's not the case in the US. If anything I see far more beers that are 6-10% now.
  - Schiendelman 2mo ago
    Your income went up. Seriously. You're seeing interesting micros that target you and other high-income people, what's in your neighborhood is targeted. Most of America is drinking lower ABV beer from a case.
    - driverdan 2mo ago
      Cheap 5% beer is still available but there is an increase of availability of higher ABV beer. For example, when I was younger grocery stores didn't stock anything but the big national brands. Now they stock far more variety, much of it over 5%. This has nothing to do with my income. I've liked better beer since I started drinking in college. I've never liked the mass produced junk.
      - Schiendelman 2mo ago
        It does have to do with your income - really your class. You aren't going to the same grocery stores as the median American.
        driverdan 2mo ago
        You're making incorrect assumptions, you know nothing about me and how I've lived.
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wolvoleo 2mo ago
What about the quarter pounder with cheese? Isn't that still a quarter pound? It would be illegal to sell any less in most places, not unless they change the name.
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TeMPOraL 2mo ago
Which is why I say people claiming that inflation is at least 2x undercounted relative to lived experience are right. Everything diminishes, all across the board. Materials get cheaper. Service quality gets lower - and when it doesn't, all the incidentals around it get worse. My go-to example: your local hairdresser may keep the same prices (adjusted for the official inflation or otherwise), but over the years, they may have stopped serving coffee and started offering only water. The salon used to be beautiful and stylish, and now looks dirty and furnished with cheapest bargain-bin business store furniture. Flowers are gone or replaced with cheap plastics. Toilets never have toilet paper in it, faucet always leaking. Waiting room sofas got replaced with cheap chairs. Even the magazines are gone, and in their place you just get leaflets. Etc. Repeat the same for your local grocery store, parking lot, car dealership, bus stop, airport, cinema, everything. The second half of the inflation is literally everywhere, in everything - it can be easily seen once you start looking for it. And after that, you can't unsee it.
Lerc 2mo ago
At this point, it's worth mentioning this, if only to make you think the robot uprising can't come soon enough. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third-pound_burger https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third-pound_burger
wisty 2mo ago
You can google "CPI price change graph by type good" to find which things have undergone real inflation vs real deflation. TVs, phones, toys, clothes, furniture, cars. Everyone likes to say Homer Simpson lived like a king. He had a car that was so bad it would be illegal to sell new today, no cell phone, no netflix, no Uber eats, clothes were so expensive it was worth the SAHM fix them, pizza or Chinese takeaway were a luxury, not a lot of furniture. People today eat so well that broke 30 year olds will order haute cuisine and say it's basically the same price as home cooking (OK it's roughly as big a rip off as maccas in Australia but still ... home cooking can be dirt cheap).
aaron695 2mo ago
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calmworm 2mo ago
Nuggets are the same shape (boot, circle) but slightly smaller and much thinner now. If I had to estimate, probably 40% less pink sludge goes into each one.
alun 2mo ago
Agreed. It's not just a reduction in size, but a reduction in general quality. For example, my preferred NIVEA roll-on deodorant used to come in a glass bottle and now it comes in a plastic one. I suspect shrinkflation has a lot to do with inflation. Companies degrade the quality of their products to preserve their margins which are being eaten up by inflation.
jpfromlondon 2mo ago
everything is being min-maxed, have you noticed how flimsy and soft cereal boxes have become, and plastic-packaged goods having thinner plastic, and often replaceable lids have been replaced with single-use film (thinking specifically of hummus for this one). Taking the time to count the ways shrinkflation is (fractionally) eroding quality of life would take an age.
- cheesecakegood 2mo ago
  It’s not 100% bad though, what people often don’t realize is that lighter weight packaging for example has a fairly decent impact on emissions!
  - account42 2mo ago
    Which does nothing to dispel the fears that most "green" movements ultimately mean reduced quality of life.
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brikym 2mo ago
Inflation is the most honest. Shrinkflation can be okay if the marketing changes. But what I cannot stand is cutting quality of products and services. It happens in all sorts of ways. Thickeners and substitutions but also when a supermarket wastes your time asking you to scan N of the same SKU at rather than providing a qty button and even the staff can't help. But on the old school checkouts they do have a quantity field. It's different when they know their time will be wasted you see. And then there is the endless market segmentation from coupons, bundles, surveillance pricing and all sorts of mechanisms designed to muddy price signals and discriminate to shake down every customer to their limit. How much of this recorded in consumer inflation I wonder? So much effort is put into scheming rather than innovation which seems highly inefficient if you think about productivity. Isn't late stage capitalism great.
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by smolder 2mo ago

oneeyedpigeon 2mo ago

> It's hard to find a product that hasn't gotten worse or more expensive, even adjusted for inflation. Hmm. I think it's just as easy to find products that haven't gotten worse or more expensive as it is to find ones that have. For every mars bar, there's a video game.

tosti 2mo ago
Video games of yore were actual games you could buy and play with friends. You had a physical copy and never had to renew a subscription, watch ads, or pay anything extra to unlock content. Most games didn't even have a separate launcher. Just run it and play. Updates, when they existed, were small. And no lootboxes, no gambling. They had hidden maps or levels, so it actually was fun to play the same game repeatedly. I can't fathom why you'd pick video games as your example ffs.
- smolder 2mo ago
  The smart tv formula gets applied everywhere. Make it cheaper by making more money through annoying/spying on customers.
- oneeyedpigeon 2mo ago
  > Video games of yore were actual games you could buy and play with friends. You had a physical copy and never had to renew a subscription, watch ads, or pay anything extra to unlock content. Most games didn't even have a separate launcher. Just run it and play. Updates, when they existed, were small. That describes at least 90% of the games I play today. I should have gone with any electrical item, tbh; that would probably have flown here without any dissent. But video games that are nowadays almost always one or two orders of magnitude 'better value' while being approximately half the price they were back in the nineties are still a legitimate example, I think.
- anticrymactic 2mo ago
  > Video games of yore were actual games you could buy and play with friends. While this is _true_, it's hardly a good-faith interpretation. The original Mario Bros was around $40 on release. Mostly sold as a bundle with the NES itself around $100. That's $350 in today's money. Oddly around the same as the switch 1 on release ($299) + BOTW ($60) Compare the "value" of NES + Mario Bros with Switch 1 + Breath of the Wild. Yes Nintendo can take one of those away from you, that's despicable, but the "product" has shrunk in no way.
  - tosti 2mo ago
    Cherry picking isn't good faith.
georgemcbay 2mo ago
> For every mars bar, there's a video game. The economics of software (including video games) are entirely different than candy bars or burgers as the marginal cost of each "unit" is effectively zero.
- oneeyedpigeon 2mo ago
  Fair enough; pretend I said "a computer" instead.
  - georgemcbay 2mo ago
    > Fair enough; pretend I said "a computer" instead. That's a better example, though the "continually better, faster & cheaper" days for computers (and consumer electronics broadly) have recently been heavily disrupted by the current AI rush. Guess we'll find out how temporary or permanent this is.
xingped 2mo ago
I think the implication is specifically for physical products. Video games aren't standardized sizes or materials and you don't somehow download 20% less content today than you did downloading the same game 5 or 10 years ago. (Ignoring some obvious outliers like games/content pulled due to licensing expirations - which are really stupid.)
- bluefirebrand 2mo ago
  > Video games aren't standardized sizes or materials and you don't somehow download 20% less content today than you did downloading the same game 5 or 10 years ago 20 years ago you bought a disk and the entire game was on there. 10 years ago you bought a disk and you have a massive day 1 patch to get the rest of the game. Today you buy a physical box with no actual disk in it, only a download code! I'm exaggerating a little bit about today's situation but not by much...
  - xingped 2mo ago
    That's not the same and that's what I'm trying to point out. A Mars bar is still a Mars bar. If you're paying more and/or getting less than you did X number of years ago, that is a simple apples to apples comparison. Since games are all, by nature, different, any comparison is apples to oranges. You can talk about specific features such as the existence of battle passes, microtransactions, loot boxes, etc., but every game's implementation is different. If I pay $10 for a game and play it for 400hrs and pay $40 for another game and only play it for 50hrs, is one necessarily worse or better than the other by that metric? For example, I've played Outer Wilds significantly less than many other games that I've enjoyed far less, but I would still rank Outer Wilds as one of my all-time top favorite games. However that's very subjective to my experience. Others would disagree. The point is, video games is a very bad point of comparison here and very obviously not the kind of product the OP is referring to.
    - wolvoleo 2mo ago
      A mars bar is probably not the same thing it was in 1986 either. Recipes get tweaked constantly to reduce ingredient cost (and usually marked with "new and improved recipe!!" Lol
AshamedBadger56 2mo ago
Video games are honestly a pretty bad example. 10-20 years ago, you'd buy your video game, and it was a complete item, that you owned and could play for as long as you didn't damage it. Once you were done with it, you could lend it to friends, or sell it and recoup a decent chunk of money for the next game you wanted. Now with everything digital only, you don't even own your games, your ability to play it is at the whims of mega-corporations. You can't resell it to recoup money, or lend it to a friend. Most games start on day 1 as essentially a beta, with tons of huge updates required to get them in a decent state, loot boxes, microtransactions, live service games taking over the entire market share, RAMmagedden driving up console prices post-launch, etc etc etc etc. They are definitely prettier now and have fancy lighting effects though.
- oneeyedpigeon 2mo ago
  > Video games are honestly a pretty bad example. 10-20 years ago, you'd buy your video game, and it was a complete item, that you owned and could play for as long as you didn't damage it. Once you were done with it, you could lend it to friends, or sell it and recoup a decent chunk of money for the next game you wanted. As I said to another commenter, that applies to many of the games I buy today. OK, not quite all since I do buy some titles digitally, but that is my choice. > They are definitely prettier now and have fancy lighting effects though. And are much better in terms of accessibility, quality-of-life in general, scope, etc.
- joegibbs 2mo ago
  There are a ton more games now, you could easily get one with similar graphics/gameplay to a 2006 game for much cheaper.
  - account42 2mo ago
    No you can't. Big studios don't make games with 2006 graphics and indies don't make the games you could get in 2006 except for the smaller scale ones. Of course games are a cop out when discussing inflation in the first place because they have zero marginal cost to produce and the market has massively expanded - if their prices had kept up with inflation something would be VERY wrong.
Xirdus 2mo ago
Subjectively, video games did get both worse and more expensive over the last 20 years. But putting that aside, the ratio isn't 1:1. I'd expect the ratio to be at least 20:1 - you can name at most 1 thing that got better/cheaper for every 20 things that got worse/more expensive.
- oneeyedpigeon 2mo ago
  I'd like to see your evidence for video games getting more expensive. Even if they were like-for-like (I'll make a case that the average video game is a far better product now than it was in the 90s), they are approximately the same absolute price today that they were 30-40 years ago, without adjusting for inflation.
  - bluefirebrand 2mo ago
    > they are approximately the same absolute price today that they were 30-40 years ago, without adjusting for inflation. You used to get a lot of stuff in a game box that wasn't just the game though. Manuals were often very detailed, arguably works of art in their own right. Also the cost of producing and shipping games is way lower online than it was for physical copies. Companies all used to have to develop their own engines and tooling to build games, that cost is mostly just gone with Unity and Unreal now. Last and definitely not least, there's way more competition in the gaming industry now, and that tends to drive prices down.
  - cogman10 2mo ago
    > Even if they were like-for-like That's the thing, the style of game release of the 90s is all but dead. Sure you can still find indy studios releasing in a 90s style, but you can't find the big players doing that. Now a lot of the big name games have switched to either a freemium model or a pay to play model. You don't simply buy a game like Overwatch, you have to get a battle pass to keep playing. And you don't ultimately own overwatch, once blizzard is done with it, the game is over and you can no longer play it. Then there's the fact that to be competitive, these games often sell items and loot boxes. If you want to not always die, you end up needing to buy these perks. That is a worst experience designed to milk money out of players as much as possible, more than what you'd be paying adjusted for inflation. The entire genre of FPS is like this now. Unless you play the old games, you basically cannot get the old experience of setting up a server, maybe letting it be open to the public, and just playing a game with friends. Instead is a bunch of random dumb shit that you have to deal with.
adamrezich 2mo ago
What alternate reality are you living in where the video games industry isn't a charred husk of what it was, just over a decade and a half ago? What's it like to live in a world where competent AAA studios are still plentiful, and the legacy studios successfully passed down knowledge and ethos to new hires, so as to avoid becoming skinsuit versions of their past selves? How is it, living in a world where several AAA blockbuster games are still being released annually, with none of them being remakes of decade-plus-old titles? Is there any wisdom in how your reality's AAA video game industry kept the stride they built up to in the 2000s, into the 2010s, that you could share with us, so we can hopefully rebuild the smoldering crater of a AAA video game industry we have in our reality?
- oneeyedpigeon 2mo ago
  > What alternate reality are you living in where the video games industry isn't a charred husk of what it was, a decade and a half ago? A world that contains Breath of the Wild, Blue Prince, Balatro, Mario Kart World, (you get the point—there are lots of good games).
  - adamrezich 2mo ago
    Two of those are Nintendo first-party games—and one of them was released nine years ago. Is “the AAA video game industry” just Nintendo, to you?
    - oneeyedpigeon 2mo ago
      Nine years ago, precisely because you said: > a decade and a half ago? For me personally, the AAA game industry is entirely Nintendo, yes. Half the games I mentioned are cross-platform, though; I know they're not 'AAA', but I don't think this discussion needs to be limited purely to AAAs. And, as I mentioned, there are plenty more games that I could have included.
      - adamrezich 2mo ago
        > For me personally, the AAA game industry is entirely Nintendo, yes. There's nothing wrong with being a fan of one company, but pretending that going from a world where there were many high-quality AAA video games released each year from many different studios to what we have today, just because Nintendo is doing alright and you like Nintendo—when the topic at hand is specifically “the video games industry” as a whole—is simply asinine. AAA studios were once the force driving technology and game design forward, regularly starting fresh new IPs that would go on to become cherished by fans. That simply does not happen anymore. What was the last fresh new Nintendo IP that went on to become a beloved recurring success—Splatoon (eleven years ago)? Nintendo deserves plenty of credit for actively working against stagnation more than literally everyone else, but they are completely peerless in this regard. Everyone else ended up falling into a death spiral of churning out remakes and/or being absorbed into Microsoft and then stagnating until death. There is no longer a vibrant industry full of technical innovation and a genuine eye toward craftsmanship, quality, and generally making new fun things to play. The indie game scene picked up some of the slack on the innovation front, to great success, yet almost none of the successful indie studios (off the top of my head, Facepunch is the only exception I can think of) have transmuted said success into building a studio with a culture focused on exploring the frontier of the medium. Hell, half of the big indie successes these days make their millions in Early Access, predicated upon the implied promise that their Early Access success will permit them to substantially build out the game beyond their Early Access offering, only to completely and utterly fail to do so in the end. Anyone who thinks the video games industry is in a good place in 2026 is completely delusional and/or simply ignoring relatively recent history and pretending that things have always been as dire as they are today. Also Mario Kart World was eighty bucks at launch dude (I had to look it up to be sure, but, yeah—I totally paid eighty US dollars for that game), and it's still selling for eighty bucks today, so, your entire position in this discussion is completely invalid on its face.
fl4regun 2mo ago
TV's for one, have become insanely cheap. You can get 4k TVs for like, nothing, especially after inflation adjustments from the 2010s. Bigger panels, brighter screens, too bad we started shoving stupid and annoying OSes and Ads in them.
- bluescrn 2mo ago
  TV quality isn't what it used to be, though. Got a fairly expensive LG OLED and after 5 years it's developing clusters of dead pixels down one edge. And even if the hardware doesn't fail/degrade, the software is often enshittified (ads pushed to smart TVs)
  - servo_sausage 2mo ago
    OLEDs are an odd example... Their warranties are generally just as good, and the lifespan due to burn in is still improving.
insane_dreamer 2mo ago
show me a modern video game that is better than Myst or Riven (in the same genre) I even prefer the original CS over most of today's FPS games.
- ChickeNES 2mo ago
  I'd rather play Candy Crush than Myst, Myst was boring as fuck.
  - em-bee 2mo ago
    i loved myst online, the multiplayer version. it's still going actually. game preferences vary.
    - ChickeNES 2mo ago
      > game preferences vary. True! But for me Myst was one of those super-hyped-up titles that failed to live up to its reputation. And I'm not a youngun, I started on NES/SNES! I'm not convinced GP isn't relying more on nostalgia than a real sampling of current titles.
      - insane_dreamer 2mo ago
        fair point -- graybeard here (without the beard :)) I did stop gaming ~15 years ago, but I have tried to find good games for my (now teenage) kids, so I have tried to research new games even if I haven't played them myself. I haven't found anything on the level of Myst/Riven/Exile. You know what else they don't make anymore? Good split/screen coop games, like Splinter Cell. Everything is online multiplayer, but no more being able to sit on a couch and play together (other than Nintendo games, racing games). Same for good ol' LAN games. And sure, it's convenient to just game from home, but there's nothing like everyone lugging their boxes over to your place and setting them up on the dining room table for a pizza-fueled all nighter :)
  - insane_dreamer 2mo ago
    ok, that's just mean :)
bluescrn 2mo ago
Retro gaming is rising in popularity for good reasons. And it's not purely nostalgia. A lot of people aren't enjoying modern games (with modern monetization)
- account42 2mo ago
  It's not just monetization. Modern games are a mass market product with all the fun parts shaved off.

jonnycoder 2mo ago

Technology in the form of computers, cell phones, and AI have been getting cheaper and better. Access to information is another one but that requires agency to take advantage of and get the benefits. This could be personal health, starting/running your own business, using ai to help create ads for your business, etc.

bix6 2mo ago
Nobody cares that their TV is cheaper when it now smashes ads in your face while using your bandwidth to serve botnets and sends a heartbeat even when offline. Everything that actually matters, like good healthy food or youth sports, is increasingly expensive or shrinkflated.
- inigyou 2mo ago
  It's because of rent. Rent keeps going up and this gets passed on to all people who buy things, live, or work, but it rarely flows the other way - rentiers spend all their rent acquiring more rent, not on productive things. And so you have this constant leeching away from the real economy.
  - bix6 2mo ago
    The rent seeking in this era really is off the charts
globalnode 2mo ago
> using ai to help create ads for your business whenever i see this i drives me away, i'd rather buy from a business that drew stick figure ads by hand. funniest thing i saw was an ai food ad and someone asked if the ai makes the food as well. the staff were actually miffed lol.
- WalterBright 2mo ago
  > i'd rather buy from a business that drew stick figure ads by hand People have complained my stick figures look "unprofessional".

asveikau 2mo ago

I'd be curious to know, with the reduction in size, if calorie density went up. Because that would fit a lot of people's perception of how food is going: you get less, but what you do get is worse for you.

leoc 2mo ago
I'd be relatively surprised if the Mars bar's calorie density went up after it was ruined in 2002. The old Mars bar was a beast: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49245791 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49245791 .
- asveikau 2mo ago
  That's one reason I phrased it as density rather than weight or a raw count of calories. For density we would have the weight as a denominator. It's conceivable that if they've removed better quality ingredients, calories per gram of weight could go up.
bluefirebrand 2mo ago
A lot of people feel like stuff tastes worse than it used to, too That's obviously hard to measure because you can't do a blind taste test of a 20 year ago candy bar and one today, and people's tastes change as they get older. But worse ingredients making a worse flavor is possible too
- TeriyakiBomb 2mo ago
  Over here in the UK at the moment you can. They’ve recently made huge changes to a lot of chocolate products in the space of a year or two. Especially cadburys which is now just at the legal definition of chocolate over here. Any lower and they legally have to call it “chocolate flavoured” which has already recently happened to a bunch of classic lunchbox chocolate bars. So shit.
mschild 2mo ago
Potentially as a side effect. A lot of ingredients are switched to cheaper, often more processed substitutes. For example, vegtable oil instead of olive oil, fructose corn syrup instead of honey or sugar. Beyond that chainging composition to reduce amount of expensive ingredients. Think Pesto Genovese which is originally Parmesan, Basil, pine nuts, etc. Instead of only pine nuts, you now include other nuts for texture and only add a smaller amount for flavour (and worse add flavoring so customers don't notice too quickly). https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/22486545/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/22486545/

Razengan 2mo ago

What the fuck are people doing about it?

inigyou 2mo ago
There was that guy who killed that billionaire, but it didn't change anything long-term.
- deleted 2mo ago
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bix6 2mo ago
Crying online! You’d think competitive brands could launch to bring joy but everyone is so cash strapped that those brands lose since the mega corps price cheaper even if it’s worse/shrinkflated. Or they just get bought and rolled into the oligopoly!

foxyv 2mo ago

This is never more apparent than when you start making your own stuff from scratch. The comparison is stark.

8by3 2mo ago
Totally, a huge swathe of things are better and cheaper when your make them yourself, you just need the time. Shame we've given up all our free time to work so we can buy worse alternatives.
- GlacierFox 2mo ago
  For a lot of my friends it's not about time. They'll proclaim their lack of time to make a simple meal, doom scroll for hours then order take-away then doom scroll half and hour while waiting for it to come.
  - customguy 2mo ago
    What about the rationalisations of those who cut corners and wine to make even more profit when they're already so rich it's become a health issue for them? How is it the sole responsibility of your friends to work around that? The idea is basically that it's "just the way it is" that the food we can buy in supermarkets, that is made in factories, that GIGANTIC amounts of real estate and logistics and energy are devoted to, that is made cheaper than it would be otherwise (and that is true even if it was awesome quality and mega healthy -- it would be more expensive, but less expensive than doing it yourself, economics of scale etc.) sucks, is unhealthy, you "shouldn't eat that". Just buy some veggies and do it yourself. It's not so hard to plant some tomatoes, either! Nevermind people in private jets doing airshows... I just can't with how lazy my friends are. It would take them 30 minutes max. It's not that you're wrong, of course. Both "sides" matter, and you always should mostly focus on what you control. But at the same time, it's better to punch up than kick down or sideways.
    - GlacierFox 2mo ago
      Unintelligible. Re-write this into something coherent so I can respond if you like.

HumblyTossed 2mo ago

Ice cream is 1.5 qt not 1/2 gallon. I don't know what they put into pizza "dough" but it's not real flour. Everything has been spreadsheeted to death.

buran77 2mo ago
To be honest, for some things, getting a smaller serving and/or higher price is a blessing in disguise - health-wise at least. Same with soda servings where very large cups or bottles encourage higher consumption.
- insane_dreamer 2mo ago
  except that soda is (sadly) one case where the cups have gotten bigger. did they even have 32 oz "extra extra gulp" size 30 years ago?
  - philipkglass 2mo ago
    The 32 oz "Big Gulp" was introduced by 7-11 in 1976 in Southern California: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Gulp https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Gulp Even bigger sizes arrived in the 1980s: Called Big Gulp because it was initially the largest such drink available at any retailer, 7-Eleven eventually introduced larger sizes. In 1986, they introduced the 44-US-fluid-ounce (1,300 ml) Super Big Gulp, followed by the 64-US-fluid-ounce (1,900 ml) Double Gulp in 1989 (later reduced to 50-US-fluid-ounce (1,500 ml))...
  - Merad 2mo ago
    Oh yes, the 1990s was the height of massive fast food drinks. Wendy's had 32 oz "biggie" drinks and a 40+ oz "great biggie". McDonalds had "super size" tho I don't recall its volume. Most of those got renamed by the mid 00's and eventually downsized.
  - phil21 2mo ago
    They were more absurd in the 90's. You'd have the gas station 64oz reusable cups you could use to do unlimited refills for a dollar. "Super Size" was a 90's thing as well, if I recall. It was basically an arms race of which company could provide the most ridiculously large portions of a cheap product like soda or fries. Then the PR swung in the 00's due to the obesity epidemic and such stuff was silently rolled back. Likely for both PR and cost reasons. The 32oz drink stuck around though pretty much everywhere.

palmotea 2mo ago

> Shrinkflation is all over. Burger buns at fast food places were more dense 20 years ago. The small burgers had 1/8th pound patties instead of the current 1/10th pound. It's hard to find a product that hasn't gotten worse or more expensive, even adjusted for inflation. Isn't capitalism great? The common pattern with everything seems to be large companies degrading size, quality, and features of products in user-hostile ways. IMHO, we need pretty strict regulation specifying standard product sizes and minimum quality. It would kill shrinkflation and also make alternatives more comparable. On a related note: I recently listened to this (very good) podcast (https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-hidden-supply-chain-making-every-menu-feel-familiar/id1056200096?i=1000733450787 https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-hidden-supply-chai..., https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-10-25/the-hidden-supply-chain-making-every-menu-feel-familiar https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-10-25/the-hidde...) that stated pretty bluntly that food in the US is also more expensive and lower quality than food in Europe.

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jelsisi 2mo ago
Why regulate this when you can just search out and buy better products? My farmers market has great deserts.
- quadyeast 2mo ago
  With desserts you come back for seconds.
slopinthebag 2mo ago
Eh, it’s more that degrading size and quality is used to mask the effects of inflation. You can absolutely find high quality products, they’re just more expensive - to some extent, they’re a more realistic price.
- wolvesechoes 2mo ago

jjtheblunt 2mo ago

> It's hard to find a product that hasn't gotten worse or more expensive, even adjusted for inflation. computers i think are more affordable now than even 20 years ago, in bang for buck

fourthark 2mo ago
The exception that proves the rule.
- Gormo 2mo ago
  The phrase "exception that proves the rule" refers to an apparent exception to the rule's outputs actually being explained by it having divergent inputs, i.e. if you claim P=>Q, then the exception that proves the rule would be an instance of ~Q=>~P. What's different about computers that makes this applicable here?
  - nkrisc 2mo ago
    What they likely mean is that pointing to one exception that is notable only because it violates the general trend is not evidence against the trend.
  - vidarh 2mo ago
    The term is often also used simply as claiming the existence of a rule by claiming the exception. It's one of those terms where I am pretty confident that I see the original use more rarely than the technically incorrect variations to the point I'd hesitate to call them incorrect any more.
    - vlovich123 2mo ago
      > This meaning of the phrase, which for Fowler is the original and clearest meaning ... This argument states if an exception exists or has to be stated, then this exception proves that there must be some rule to which the case is an exception So no, OP used the correct definition and no wide spread usage uses ~Q=>~P. That's a weird logical formulation that was randomly concocted. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exception_that_proves_the_rule https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exception_that_proves_the_rule Said another way: Rule: It's hard to find a product that hasn't gotten worse or more expensive, even adjusted for inflation. Exception: computers i think are more affordable now than even 20 years ago, in bang for buck This proves the rule because if it's an exception to the rule, therefore the rule must exist in the first place.

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harrall 2mo ago

McDonald’s has been 1/10th pound since 1950.

PaulDavisThe1st 2mo ago
Citation not required, but it would likely help make your case...
- throwaway2037 2mo ago
  I was surprised too by this claim, but a quick Google search turned up this tweet on X: https://x.com/McFranchisee/status/1998885781319082342 https://x.com/McFranchisee/status/1998885781319082342 > From pretty much day one, the size of a @McDonalds beef patty has been 10:1 (10 patties per pound of beef). It still follows this standard today. Same size. > There are no fillers, preservatives, organs, bones, or anything like that, just 100% pure USDA beef. The box doesn’t even need an ingredient label; it simply states 100% Beef.

jasondigitized 2mo ago

Televisions are clearly an exception to this rule and I would like to know why.

georgeburdell 2mo ago
China
hnuser123456 2mo ago
Because TVs can be made to show ads, especially if the manufacturer themselves partners with an ad network.
wizzwizz4 2mo ago
Does your television not take 10 seconds to start, 2 seconds to respond to button inputs, request internet access, try to sell you things, and exfiltrate your personal data? If not: where are you getting your televisions?
- yumraj 2mo ago
  No it doesn’t. Why? Because I don’t use it as a TV AND a set top box. I use it just as a TV that is connected to an AppleTV And before when I was using the inbuilt smart TV, I had disabled various android services related to ads on my Sony TV, and run pi-hole that blocks ads.
- phil21 2mo ago
  Nope. Takes maybe 3-5 seconds to start from when I press any button on my Shield remote. HDMI CEC autoselects the input and everything reliably about 98% of the time. Once in a while (every couple months) I need to reboot my shield which is annoying. Faster than my old CRTs would warm up and get to full color output, degauss, etc. Better experience than some chunky expensive universal remote using IR blasters to coordinate it all. Far better than anything I ran in the 90's or even 00's. 2025 model of the latest and greatest LG OLED. TV not connected to Internet, because who on HN would actually do that? Even with your chosen set top box it's cheaper than ever before. It's on you if you choose to use the built-in Internet players. Those effectively come for free and you get what you pay for in that regard. No different than the 90's or 00's buying a cable box, VCR, or DVD player. Cheaper actually, since a Shield or Apple TV replaces all those devices into one quite relatively affordable device. TVs overall are far better quality in terms of user experience. And I'm someone who has always had an overkill home theatre setup I spend far too much money on and upgrade far too often. It's only gotten better performance for dollar my entire life. I suppose if you enjoy channel flipping it might be worse? But that's not something I really do much of, so hard to comment there.

mrbestregards 2mo ago

They're a 1/10th of a pound now?! In 2009, I worked at McDonalds and they were definitely 1/8th pound patties! Holy moly.

SoftTalker 2mo ago
No, McDonald's has always been 10:1 for the "regular" burgers, I think forever but certainly back to the early 1980s when I worked there.

somat 2mo ago

Companies hate raising prices, or more specifically customers hate it when prices are raised so companies don't like to do it. especially in foods. As such the go-to dance to keep up with inflation is to reduce the size while keeping the price the same as long as possible, when this becomes too noticeable the size is returned to original the price is increased and a big 20% more is added to the package. Repeat as needed. Note that this is the most charitable interpretation where the customer deception is fairly minor(inflation happens, gotta sneak that price increase in there some how) Stuff like deceptive packaging(make it look like there is more than is actually present) punts it into the outright evil category.

Night_Thastus 2mo ago
Yep. People blame companies, but ultimately they are doing what the customer 'wants'. Same with things like separate fees for credit cards, or shipping. Customers don't like seeing an extra fee, so companies roll it all together - even if it often means they end up paying more in the long run.
- 8note 2mo ago
  the customer doesnt want higher prices or smaller items. This is a dirty trick to try and make customers not notice that the quality is worse ultimately the company is taking part in the government's goal to keep a certain level of inflation, rather than just its own desire to screw customers and make the number go up. If the government wasnt in on it, there would be regulations around shrinkflation
  - Night_Thastus 2mo ago
    Companies like Mars, Inc don't care a hoot about what the level of inflation is. They care about their shareholders, who care about stock growth. Anything else is completely and totally irrelevant for them. Higher prices -> customer unhappy -> less sales -> stock price go down Smaller bars -> hopefully customer doesn't notice -> same sales -> stock OK That's the only logic in here. The prices of the ingredients have gone up, so they're forced with that choice.

xp84 2mo ago

The burger patties were absolutely not 1/8 pound. I can assure you from experience as a Professional McDonald's Worker in 2003 that those were 10:1 patties then as well. I can also vouch for the same from another major burger chain circa 2001. I'm sure they shrink everything possible, but interestingly they haven't been shaving down the beef quantities for some reason.

therealdrag0 2mo ago
Didn’t they also have filler then remove it to be 100% beef at some point?
- FireBeyond 2mo ago
  Only after attempts to call one of their suppliers or processors "100% Beef" failed.
  - sandcat_ 2mo ago
    https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/mcdonalds-100-beef/ https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/mcdonalds-100-beef/
  - hydrogen7800 2mo ago
    I recall a similar claim regarding pop music compilation CDs advertised as being performed by "The Original Cast", which was really a group by that name playing covers of popular songs. Or another being "Made in USA", where Usa was a city in Korea.
    - b112 2mo ago
      "Genuine diamonds" sold fake diamonds after trademarking the name, I thibk. However a decade later I read about them losibg a lawsuit. This tricks don't work any more.
      - tancop 2mo ago

fiftyacorn 2mo ago

Its not just shrinkflation for these mars bars. Its sugar tax to reduce obesity

bluescrn 2mo ago

There's also 'Drinkflation', the ABV of beers being reduced. (Maybe it's mostly a UK thing due to the tax system, weaker beer = less tax) Pretty sad state of things when simple pleasures like beer or chocolate are hit so hard by enshittification.

driverdan 2mo ago
That's not the case in the US. If anything I see far more beers that are 6-10% now.
- Schiendelman 2mo ago
  Your income went up. Seriously. You're seeing interesting micros that target you and other high-income people, what's in your neighborhood is targeted. Most of America is drinking lower ABV beer from a case.
  - driverdan 2mo ago
    Cheap 5% beer is still available but there is an increase of availability of higher ABV beer. For example, when I was younger grocery stores didn't stock anything but the big national brands. Now they stock far more variety, much of it over 5%. This has nothing to do with my income. I've liked better beer since I started drinking in college. I've never liked the mass produced junk.
    - Schiendelman 2mo ago
      It does have to do with your income - really your class. You aren't going to the same grocery stores as the median American.
      - driverdan 2mo ago
        You're making incorrect assumptions, you know nothing about me and how I've lived.

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wolvoleo 2mo ago

What about the quarter pounder with cheese? Isn't that still a quarter pound? It would be illegal to sell any less in most places, not unless they change the name.

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TeMPOraL 2mo ago

Which is why I say people claiming that inflation is at least 2x undercounted relative to lived experience are right. Everything diminishes, all across the board. Materials get cheaper. Service quality gets lower - and when it doesn't, all the incidentals around it get worse. My go-to example: your local hairdresser may keep the same prices (adjusted for the official inflation or otherwise), but over the years, they may have stopped serving coffee and started offering only water. The salon used to be beautiful and stylish, and now looks dirty and furnished with cheapest bargain-bin business store furniture. Flowers are gone or replaced with cheap plastics. Toilets never have toilet paper in it, faucet always leaking. Waiting room sofas got replaced with cheap chairs. Even the magazines are gone, and in their place you just get leaflets. Etc. Repeat the same for your local grocery store, parking lot, car dealership, bus stop, airport, cinema, everything. The second half of the inflation is literally everywhere, in everything - it can be easily seen once you start looking for it. And after that, you can't unsee it.

Lerc 2mo ago

At this point, it's worth mentioning this, if only to make you think the robot uprising can't come soon enough. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third-pound_burger https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third-pound_burger

wisty 2mo ago

You can google "CPI price change graph by type good" to find which things have undergone real inflation vs real deflation. TVs, phones, toys, clothes, furniture, cars. Everyone likes to say Homer Simpson lived like a king. He had a car that was so bad it would be illegal to sell new today, no cell phone, no netflix, no Uber eats, clothes were so expensive it was worth the SAHM fix them, pizza or Chinese takeaway were a luxury, not a lot of furniture. People today eat so well that broke 30 year olds will order haute cuisine and say it's basically the same price as home cooking (OK it's roughly as big a rip off as maccas in Australia but still ... home cooking can be dirt cheap).

aaron695 2mo ago

[dead]

calmworm 2mo ago

Nuggets are the same shape (boot, circle) but slightly smaller and much thinner now. If I had to estimate, probably 40% less pink sludge goes into each one.

alun 2mo ago

Agreed. It's not just a reduction in size, but a reduction in general quality. For example, my preferred NIVEA roll-on deodorant used to come in a glass bottle and now it comes in a plastic one. I suspect shrinkflation has a lot to do with inflation. Companies degrade the quality of their products to preserve their margins which are being eaten up by inflation.

jpfromlondon 2mo ago

everything is being min-maxed, have you noticed how flimsy and soft cereal boxes have become, and plastic-packaged goods having thinner plastic, and often replaceable lids have been replaced with single-use film (thinking specifically of hummus for this one). Taking the time to count the ways shrinkflation is (fractionally) eroding quality of life would take an age.

cheesecakegood 2mo ago
It’s not 100% bad though, what people often don’t realize is that lighter weight packaging for example has a fairly decent impact on emissions!
- account42 2mo ago
  Which does nothing to dispel the fears that most "green" movements ultimately mean reduced quality of life.
- deleted 2mo ago
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brikym 2mo ago

Inflation is the most honest. Shrinkflation can be okay if the marketing changes. But what I cannot stand is cutting quality of products and services. It happens in all sorts of ways. Thickeners and substitutions but also when a supermarket wastes your time asking you to scan N of the same SKU at rather than providing a qty button and even the staff can't help. But on the old school checkouts they do have a quantity field. It's different when they know their time will be wasted you see. And then there is the endless market segmentation from coupons, bundles, surveillance pricing and all sorts of mechanisms designed to muddy price signals and discriminate to shake down every customer to their limit. How much of this recorded in consumer inflation I wonder? So much effort is put into scheming rather than innovation which seems highly inefficient if you think about productivity. Isn't late stage capitalism great.

deleted 2mo ago

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