it's a problem because food prices, prepared or not, are up since COVID and wages are not. no amount of newsreaders with $500 haircuts can explain that away or reframe it.
the deal struck in the US has always been cheap food. yes, it will kill you because it's full of cheap sugar, cheap oil, and cheap salt and the latest synthetic taste molecules, but when you were hungry you could usually find some warm mouthfuls of junk on the go for cheap. my move back in the day was a large french fry for $1 when i was moving between work sites on "lunch". that's the type of shit that placated me and made me less likely to confront the owner, fold him in half, and insert him into his own ass.
people will cram themselves with 3 roommates into a basement, sleep in a car, find illegal housing. they will not pursue higher education. they will not go to the doctor. but food is an immediate/visceral thing that is upsetting to be priced out on.
I hate being priced out of housing. But yeah food is the only thing that will ever cause riots in western people... now can we hurry it up?
companies raising prices? that's communism because it's something i don't like.
It’s so funny how in ancient times, people would pray and make sacrifices to the gods in order to have a better harvest; or they thought a bad harvest was the fault of some deity. What simpletons!
Anyway here’s my rant about why Joe Biden is to blame for our economy (or why he’s the savior of our economy, works for either).
fr though, so many Americans attribute the performance of the economy to a singular person. The ones who think they’re really smart will say “no no that’s ridiculous, it’s the fault of one of the two parties”. Absolutely no one sees the broader forces at play other than us Marxists.
But that’s how bourgeois democracy is designed, right? The government serves to obfuscate the role of capital so the people think it’s all “the government”.
But that’s how bourgeois democracy is designed, right? The government serves to obfuscate the role of capital so the people think it’s all “the government”.
Exactly. "Government" is the scapegoat. That's how you can over time con people into believing that "the market" is always right and provides the best solutions.
“Everything is actually perfect sweaty and if you even raise an eyebrow at the democrats/republicans, our glorious saviors, you deserve to die.”
And that's why the mood is "death to Amerika"; my outlook doesn't change til theirs does. And it probably won't change until they have to live through agony, catastrophe, and decline.
McDs only has a $16 meal because of The Other Party. If you vote for The Other Party, you are voting for people to starve to death because they cannot afford McDs. If we only had singular, ideologically uniform, all-powerful One Party Government, none of these problems would be happening.
I've been waiting for strict party lines to be drawn in the realm of fast food for years. In America, where you get your burger should be a shibboleth for all to see.
I'm going to incorporate that into my conception of BurgerPunk. Rocker Boys are replaced with Grill Boys
In-n-out is probably closest to how it would actually operate since efficient supply chains are such an important part of their business model.
Someone explain to me why namebrand soda is 3x the price of storebrand
According to my grocery co-shopper, it tastes a little tiny bit different in an unexplainable way, and this minute differentiation is worth several dollars at a time apparently.
Don't forget that the indiscernable taste is a personality trait and people will inject themselves into your consumption to tell you how inferior you are to touch something not personally vetted by them(no of course they haven't sullied their faculties with generic how dare you).
Double points if it's diet. Your unhealthy chemical vice has to be unhealthy in very specific ways!
"I asked for more money for my products and now the poors are asking to be paid more so they can afford to give me any money at all. How could this be happening to me?"
real talk though if you get the app you can get two mcdoubles, a medium fry, and a soda for like 6 -7 dollars if you use the free fry coupon. Legit cheaper than cooking for me rn.
if you "pay" yourself for labor in the accounting it's often cheaper to eat out, but if you'd be spending time driving to mcdonald's anyway the cost of home cooking is much lower. I average $3 per dinner (for one). For me, this meal would be
- two or three potatoes, $0.50 (1 lb @$2.49/5lbs)
- 8oz soda, $0.12 or $0.20 for name brand (tenth of a two-liter bottle)
- two beyond burgers, $3 (I wouldn't normally eat this meal, this is the price of two pounds of tofu lol)
- bread and condiments - basically free
Chop potatoes, dump in pot of oil, fry burgers, assemble. If you are an hourly contractor making more than a McDonald's worker and count the 20m cooking as half an hour of wages lost, then it's better to buy. Otherwise, cheaper than the restaurant because material price is about the same and you don't have to pay for their real estate expenses, stolen labor share, etc.
Oh for sure. I work a salaried position and they keep laying people off and throwing their work on the rest of us so i’m working 12 hours a day on the reg. No lunches are required by law where I am so any time i save there is time i get to spend with my family later in the day. It’s also literally around the corner from me so that isn’t part of my accounting.
I’m lucky enough to make a wage now that allows me to actually view convenience cost as something I can manage so for the sake of my mental health it feels worth it to me. This isn’t like an every day thing but if i need to get lunch or dinner for whatever reason it’s def worth it in my situation. A year ago it was a different story lol Definitely dependent on people’s situations like most expenses.
The Good Burger 2 Meal Exclusively at Arby's® is like $14 for a large.
I want to see ol Democrats wriggle their way out of THIS Jam!
Edit: wait I forgot the importance of the burguer the democrats are done
Inflation is coming down and what remains high is housing rent, but that too is showing signs of decline over the next few months.
I guarantee you that by election day 2024 Biden is going to win big. People who look at polls today and think that Trump even stands a chance, are in for a big surprise.
Rents are not declining; they're at an all time high and still growing. Inflation, even though lower, is still positive, which means prices are still rising.
Where is that graph someone posted that showed inflation rates falling but had that asterisk that excluded food, rent, (and basically everything else that matters most). Tl;dr inflation is down on all the stuff you can't afford anyway.
This is wrong. The article you cited has data up until August 2023.
Asking rent has been declining since September 2023: https://www.rent.com/research/average-rent-price-report/
Bureau of Labor Statistics has a 12-month lag when it comes to housing price, which means that elevated rent is still counted in the CPI print. Expect to see CPI continues to fall over the next few months. The current round of inflation is over.
All the right wing economists who predicted a scary recession throughout 2022 and 2023 were wrong.
You're getting epicycles confused with long term trends. From your own source:
Price growth continues to be held down by below-normal demand, increased inventory and a return to seasonal price trends that typically begin dropping in the fall.
Also from your own source:
Over that time, rents rose over 11.5 percent, climbing from $1,839 to $2,054 in August 2022. Prices that September were still up 8.83 percent but began a decline — led by decreased demand — which lasted until rents bottomed out at $1,937 in February of this year.
Bureau of Labor Statistics has a 12-month lag when it comes to housing price, which means that elevated rent is still counted in the CPI print.
Yeah, that's how CPI works. Not sure what point you think you're making.
Expect to see CPI continues to fall over the next few months. The current round of inflation is over. Expect to see CPI continues to fall over the next few months.
The CPI isn't falling, so I'm not sure where you're seeing a continuation: CPI for all items unchanged in October; shelter up
Rents are still up from the trough in February and we'd likely expect a similar pattern to happen next year assuming that the typical pattern holds. We're still above that bottom from earlier this year and to say that a seasonal cooling off represents entry into a longer deflationary cycle is ludicrous. None of that even addresses (again from your own source):
Over the longer term, rents remain elevated. Since the pandemic, prices have increased by more than 20 percent, adding over $340 to monthly rent bills
All the right wing economists who predicted a scary recession throughout 2022 and 2023 were wrong.
Cool?
Can you tell that to my landlord? They keep raising my rent :/
This isnt true. Covid caused a sharp drop. Before that the housing crash in 2008 did as well.
The problem is that rent only went down on cataclysm. Otherwise, it just goes up.
The further problem is that it likely wont go down much on cataclysm anymore, as investment firms snap up cheap housing and use third parties algorithms to do rent price fixing.
I linked this article in another reply already: https://www.rent.com/research/average-rent-price-report/
Asking rent has been declining since September 2023. New rental leases have lower rent than a year prior. But because the Bureau of Labor Statistics has a 12-month lag in housing price, the elevated rent is still being counted in the CPI print, but this will continue to drop when new rental leases are being counted over the next few months.
Don't you love how the price of such a critical part of life is controlled by a so-called "free market"? Maybe we can try a different way of distributing housing and shelter to people?
well the guy thinks rent prices are going down, so of course he is completely out of touch with reality
This article is propaganda bs. The price of a meal is not directly related to the state of our economy. But this article sure would like you to think that. Evil companies will always exploit the people who blindly buy their products. Especially if you buy their overpriced shit and post about it. It's just engagement for them
The price of a meal is not directly related to the state of our economy.
This is the kind of thing someone says when they don't know what it's like to be hungry
they don’t know what it’s like to be hungry
I can't wait till they have to learn.
Evil companies will always exploit the people who blindly buy their products.
Sure. But that doesn't establish the relative price/income ratio of retail.
It's just engagement for them
The horse-race politics angle is pure political engagement. However, the cost of basic necessities relative to the prevailing availability of incomes is a lot more than just engagement. They're describing real material conditions.
