Shrinkflation
Spoiler alert, this blog is more informative than funny. It’s also has a bit of an opinion.
A local discount store raised the price of most of its goods to $1.25 from its once hallmark, $1.00. This is 25% inflation.
One of the coffee drinks shrank from 11 ounces to 8 ounces. This corresponds to a 37.5% increase in the per-ounce price of the coffee drink. A corresponding 37.5% increase in the 11-ounce can would have made the new price $1.72. The manufacturers chose not to do this. They hope we will continue to see the same price and think nothing has changed.
Disguising price increases by shrinking the product is shrinkflation, the kissing cousin of inflation.
If we combine the 25% price increase over a year ago with the 37.5% increase via shrinkflation, we get the percentage increase per ounce in this coffee drink to be 71.9%. I don’t think we can blame all of this 71.9% on increases in wages. Yet, our policy, especially the Federal Reserve’s, seems to be dedicated to throwing the lowest-earning workers out of jobs.
I had thought up a scathingly brilliant and funny blog early today, but I forgot the idea. So you got this post instead. Modern live can be hard.
– Paul De Lancey, The Comic Chef, Ph.D.
My cookbook, Following Good Food Around the World, with its 180 wonderful recipes, my newest novel, Do Lutheran Hunks Eat Mushrooms, a hilarious apocalyptic thriller, and all my other books, are available on amazon.com.
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