Objects in Bag May be Smaller Than Expected!
Mrs. Denmarkguy and I were enjoying our lunch sandwiches with turkey, Swiss cheese and arugula from the garden when she decided she needed some potato chips to perfect the sandwich.
I decided to have a few as well, because why not?
As the beckoning chip bag sat next to me on the table, I noticed the usual factory imprint, including the price.
$7.29
When the hell did a bag of chips get to cost $7.29?
Thankfully, I used a store coupon when I bought these chips, and the price I paid was actually $3.99. Even so... the "marked price" for a "Party Size" bag of chips is now $7.29.
Mrs. Denmarkguy and I started reminiscing about our college daze and how you could usually get a bag of fairly cheap chips at a convenience store or mini-mart for 99 cents. But even the good chips in the "family size" bag were always less than $2.00.
I chuckled to myself when I noticed that the bag contained 12 1/2 oz. of chips. The bag looked the same as it always had... but "way back when" the bag had 16 oz.
So-called "shrinkflation" in action!
Have we turned into "those old people" who sit around and complain about nothing being like "the good old days," all the time?
Hardly.
More likely, we are merely making observations about the evident collision course many are experiencing... in which our ability to pay for the ordinary stuff of everyday life is simply not keeping up with the cost of everyday stuff.
The Price of Eggs in the US is a Scam!
Regardless of what the current administration might be saying, we are still paying about $9.00 US for a carton of eggs at the local supermarket.
Eggs are much cheaper in other parts of the world, including my native Denmark... which is otherwise a very expensive place to live.
But here's the thing: a couple of years ago, a dozen eggs cost pretty much the same "here" as it did "there."
But then someone, somewhere freaked out and screamed "Bird Flu! Bird Flu! Bird Flu!" and suddenly the price of eggs more than doubled.
Egg producers worried that they would lose their entire flocks!
Whereas some egg producers definitely did suffer losses because affacted chicken flocks had to be culled, it is noteworthy that most major egg producers in the USA are enjoying record profits since the bird flu scare drove up the price of eggs to near triple what they were, a few years ago.
Some months back, I read an article in The Guardian about this very thing.
In fact, there are federal lawsuits pending, concerning alleged price fixing and price gouging consumers.
It's the American Way: "Greedflation" in action!
In the meantime, our food budget continues to need ever more careful micro-management in order for us to keep afloat. Like many, we increasingly just eat what we can afford, not necessarily what we want, nor what's healthy for us...
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Created at 2025.07.17 11:55 PDT
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I'm glad eggs are cheaper than that here. I paid about $4 for a carton of 18. Still a lot, but not your insanity!
No one seems to talk about the COVID money supply inflation. Something like 40% of all the dollars ever created happened then, and it slipped under the radar. Cantillon effects and the slow propagation of money through the economy can only create distortion, and that's assuming there are no supply chain issues. There were those, too.
Greed is a constant, but politics is a series of shocks as people play tug-of-war with our lives. No wonder we feel stretched thin.
We'll see when/if ours come down a bit. We're laboring somewhat under the strange cage/free-roaming laws of the United People's Socialist Republic of Washington State... just makes it slower to filter down, even though Safeway/Albertson's isn't based here.
COVID is going to take a long time to "unpack," if we ever will. Was it an economic thing, or a control thing, or an indoctrination thing... or a combination of the above?
Money flows are likely very difficult to predict... for example, we used our "stimulus checks" to upgrade our garden from "a few plants for fun" to a structured growing operation that provides the bulk of our grown food... outside conventional supply chains. Other people saw an opportunity to buy big screen TVs...
Some paid down bills, or invested like you did. Others were of a more short-term consumerist mindset. This is one of the reasons I am skeptical of UBI proposals, too. Will people build, or coast along? It depends on the person. Producers or plunderers? Makers or moochers? And such redistribution will be funded by either ongoing inflation or more taxes on the producers. It's a perverse incentive structure whenever anyone tries to manage such a complex system where the parts are human beings with varying morality, time preference, and even taste in style.
I'm skeptical of the "universal" part of UBI. It might be more viable if it comes with conditions. Like our friend Chris gets food stamps... he can't just buy beer and cigarettes. Sure, he can buy pizza and candy bars, but he's incentivized to buy fresh produce because it gets him a $60/month bonus.
Don't just hand people money, give them a card (like a gift card) that only authorizes for things like groceries, utilities, medical expenses, rent and such... the basics of staying alive. Is that taking people's "freedom?" Not really, they are perfectly free to not accept the conditions, and not get the benefits... it's just a contract.
Indeed, greed has become the primary driving force of the market