In the article it says:

To account for possible changes in package sizes, we focused on the price per unit, whether it was an ounce of salsa or a square foot of aluminum foil.

I'm not sure if it's a national thing, but Hardees/Carl's Jr Large Cup sizes slowly decreased in volume until they matched the McDonald's Large Cups.

There's been plenty of volume gaming as costs and prices have risen.

"Pack contains 6 Mega Rolls (224 Sheets Per Roll) of Charmin Ultra Soft Toilet Paper"

to

"MEGA ROLLS, MEGA VALUE: Pack contains 6 Mega Rolls (208 Sheets Per Roll) of Charmin Ultra Soft Toilet Paper"

Everyone saw that coming when they changed roll sizes and reframed it, right?

I rarely eat pork, but saw some ridiculously cheap bacon at the store last week.

When I got home I noticed it was 12oz instead of the (historical) norm 16oz.

In other words: enshitification ensues!

I’ve had a gripe with “basket of goods” approach. Does a household really care that much if the game of clue is 10% cheaper in 2025?

There needs to be an index that reflects what people really need and the closest I’ve found is the ALICE index: https://www.unitedforalice.org/essentials-index

The Economist tried to solve this in the past with https://www.economist.com/interactive/big-mac-index (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Mac_Index for non-subscribers)

1. It sounds like you're just describing a larger "basket of goods"? That data is available, but also valuable, and I'm not sure why the basket of goods tracked by the CPI or NPR would be inadequate.

2. This specific exercise is designed to be relatable to individuals (in general, and specifically ones such as the people interviewed in the article who claimed that their grocery bill went up about 50% in a year, which is implausible to put it politely) so that they can understand the actual level of inflation rather than the one they imagined in their head.

They're pricing at the point of pain, not maximizing efficiency. There are few enough companies (what, like, 3?) that own the majority of the brands so they don't even need to collude to figure out that they can all hover around "as high as we can get away with" together.

I've been nursing a minor Coke Zero addiction for years but usually get the store brand which is close enough at half the cost. For whatever reason Coke Zero itself dropped in price by about 30% recently but that's apparently not nationwide.

It really kind of blows my mind how much of that people drink. I'll get a 2 liter bottle that will last days and then I read about people going through entire cases of Mountain Dew Insane Flavor Combo Super Bacinator Blast in a day and it's like my god that's like 4000 kcals of corn syrup.

It's totally "because they can". Even if you take marketing budgets into account I can't imagine it costs that much more to make a 2l of Diet Coke vs the store brands which still sell for $1 where I live

I buy soda syrup to make soda, but even that's gotten expensive. Funny thing is that I do it to reduce how much I was putting in recycling, but even with the extra state tax for bottles/cans, it actually costs me slightly more to make it myself.

I've had great results making my own mineral water clones though, so maybe I'll try making LabCoatz's coca cola clone syrup and see how it works with sucrolose or allulose.

>I can't think of a good explanation for this.

Supply and demand.

If you're buying individual bottles, you're paying for the refrigerator. Otherwise you buy boxes and it's still very cheap. Spindrift is $6.49 for an eight-pack and LaCroix is cheaper. I haven't bought Coke in a long time, sorry.

It was intentional price gouging, but prices have become to come down after shareholders pressured CEOs to lower the prices in response to tepid sales numbers.

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/pepsico-cut-prices-eliminate-...

(The link is for PepsiCo but we all know that they all raised their prices together and will lower their prices together.)

If you add a few cents of spices a day, I would argue it's not even too boring af and can even arguably be fairly tasty!

The companies that got flamed by 1600 Penn were the ones that raised prices without paying the occupant of 1600 Penn a bribe beforehand.

> listened to a podcast recently that some 'homeowners' have not made a mortgage payment in years, have no ability to pay,

How? Somebody is holding the bag here on the mortgage - a bank, probably. And they are fine with not receiving payments? Or is somebody else making payments on the homeowner's behalf?

I don't use them frequently, but I love them for some things. In particular, my wife likes our cloths to look nice. This means wiping up something staining will make the cloths look worse. In those cases I pull out a paper towel. I could get black cloths to get around this, but she doesn't like those. So, here we are.

They're also useful when I need to use a harsh chemical that I don't want lingering on a household cloth my young kids might use on their bodies.

I've had the same roll for around a year, but it's almost exhausted. I think they're fine.

They're also very useful in a lab setting, but that's another matter.

Same here.

We stopped using toilet paper during covid, got a bidet, and bought a couple hundred shop towels to dry our butts. Now we only buy toilet paper for guests, which happens maybe once a year after throwing several parties.

Then we also bought shop towels for the kitchen to replace paper towels. I love the shop towels so much.

The butt-towels are white, and we wash them with bleach, there's been zero problems doing this over the last ~6 years. If there happens to be a bit of excess poop on a towel (typically there is none at all), we just throw it out, we have hundreds. The kitchen towels are blue, so we don't mix them up with the butt-towels.

We have laundry baskets for each kind of shop towel. A small one in the bathrooms, a larger one in the kitchen for the kitchen towels. We have to wash the butt-towels maybe once a month, and about the same for the kitchen towels. It's a simple chore that takes practically none of our time, less than it would to go out and buy paper. No, the butt-towels do not smell at all, they dry quickly and there's never been any problem whatsoever.

It's so much better than spending multiple $100s of dollars a year on paper that literally gets flushed down the toilet or goes into the trash.

A few of our friends took notice and started doing this too.

Honestly, I don't know why we ever wiped our butts with toilet paper for so many years, it's just so... shitty. It's just not a good experience. When we travel we miss our bidet and shop towels so much, to the point that I've ordered a cheap bidet if I'm staying in an Airbnb for a week or more, and install it there, and leave it behind. $30 well spent.

I think the real issue is that for the powers that be, inflation is seen as either neutral or a good thing. The only people it hurts is the working class and the blame is nebulous. So it is used as a tool to increase taxes without changing laws, lower the cost of debt, and cut labor wages since they don't get pay raises commensurate with inflation. So I think it is a trick played upon the working class to screw them over in the long term while the wealthy are protected because all their assets simply go up in value with inflation. I think the target inflation rate should be 0%, not 2%. I simply don't believe the justification for the 2% target.

A weak economy bodes well for cash infused investors as fire sale prices arise.

I think we’ve crossed a line where we can no longer assume basic alignment with “our” leadership.

man, i already can't wait for November to be over.

>It's disappointing, but not surprising, that people thought the president would make any really impact on inflation

Except that a president, in normal times, COULD make an impact on inflation, both directly and indirectly.

What is surprising, is that after a completely failed presidency that saw a marked decrease in middle class prosperity, people thought that Donald Trump, of all people, could bring inflation down.

Even if ice cream is lower, if the price of staples is going up you have to make cuts elsewhere.

If you try it at home you'll realise combining milk, butter and sugar in a bowl doesn't create ice cream. And when you figure out how to create ice cream you'll realise moving said ice cream to a place where you can sell it requires extra steps too

Labor costs have risen. There are other inputs than a handful of raw materials.

Ice cream is being priced too high if the ice cream sellers would make more money by decreasing the price of ice cream. If they wouldn't, it is appropriately priced.

Or, from the buyer's perspective, it is priced appropriately if the total amount buyers would spend on it would go down if the price is lowered or raised.

There isn't a correct intrinsic price that an object should be sold at that can be calculated based on the ingredients and labor. That idea is one of the fundamental flaws of Marxism. Price is a compromise between the buyers and sellers, based on the values of each.

Maybe the milk and butter were local while the ice cream was imported and hit with tariffs?

Does ice cream need to be affordable to 100% of US households, regardless of their other budgeting decisions?

That's the implication of your comment.

First, I think you're probably right that ice cream is priced too high compared to its inputs.

But maybe there are other factors? What about energy? One would assume that ice cream has a higher energy requirement than other "treat" style products? Are there specific tariff impacts on ice cream manufacturing equipment?

it may be that the costs of labor, distribution, and manufacture (for various reasons) have been increased

Could be. But also, ice cream manufacturers buy their ingredients more cheaply than consumers do. It is very possible that the cost of milk/butter/sugar at Walmart reflect Walmart deciding to lower their profit margins on these items, even if the cost to Walmart has increased.

Or - Walmart is a big enough supplier that they have stable contracts with manufacturers, and are able to purchase their ingredients for the same cost as always, while Turkey Hill et al is competing over what's left. (Like Apple, buying up TSMC runs.)