I lived on Social Assistance and the handouts of Church- and Community-run food banks for over a year in my youth, and know first-hand that the reason a lot of these items are on this list are 100% because they are some of the cheapest ways to get calories into your body. Same with fast food.
I made a point of not buying store-brand or what was on sale when I finally could do that because I could do that and it mattered to me, I finally had control over my choice of how I ate.
Worst part? I was in a super-privileged country that provided me with that Social Assistance and community support to begin with! I shudder to think of those elsewhere (including where I now live) with no such safety net.
I promise to those who say “Stop buying that crap” that the world has done a really good job of making sure the people who have no choice but to buy that crap because they can’t afford to do otherwise (or don’t have time to do otherwise because they’re working multiple jobs and juggling home life at the same time.) They do not need your help to feel worse. But they do need your support.
Definitely. Which reminds me to post another obligatory quotation.
The reason that the rich were so rich, Vimes reasoned, was because they managed to spend less money.
Take boots, for example. He earned thirty-eight dollars a month plus allowances. A really good pair of leather boots cost fifty dollars. But an affordable pair of boots, which were sort of OK for a season or two and then leaked like hell when the cardboard gave out, cost about ten dollars. Those were the kind of boots Vimes always bought, and wore until the soles were so thin that he could tell where he was in Ankh-Morpork on a foggy night by the feel of the cobbles.
But the thing was that good boots lasted for years and years. A man who could afford fifty dollars had a pair of boots that’d still be keeping his feet dry in ten years’ time, while the poor man who could only afford cheap boots would have spent a hundred dollars on boots in the same time and would still have wet feet.
This was the Captain Samuel Vimes ‘Boots’ theory of socioeconomic unfairness.
Which, circling back to the FPP, has recently inspired a real-world price index.
Monroe was prompted to create her index after inflation jumped to 5.4% last week, and she found herself “infuriate[d]” that the index (the consumer price index or CPI) used for this calculation “grossly underestimates the real cost of inflation as it happens to people with the least”.
Right!?! And even then… modern society really does demonize the working poor to an upsetting degree. Oddly enough, it’s often a truly bi-partisan thing.
There was a bare mention of 2020 having had a 7.7% increase across the board, but by leaving off that year from the chart strongly implies it is, indeed, one administration to blame. The price hikes this year are reacting, quite opportunistically, to petrol prices, which have artificially spiked, a spike directly caused by Putin.
Additionally, the article puts all the blame on inflation, with no mention of the well-recognized (if not widely-acknowledged) role that profiteering has played in the recent price increases.
Whether intended or not, the article is politically slanted.
ETA: I just remembered this. I love this cookbook. It doesn’t solve the food desert issue or the time to cook issue others have mentioned, but if you know anyone with access to regular grocery stores who is struggling with their food budget, pass this on:
It was a really cool thesis project that the author has made free to download. Has great tips on minimal kitchen equipment, too.
I just re-read the article and still don’t see any mention of 2020. Where did you see that prices went up by 7.7% in 2020? Regardless, I really don’t think that adding 2020 data to the chart helps make this year look good by comparison.
Per the Bureau of Labor Statistics data everything has gone up a lot in the last couple years whether or not energy is included. That’s not a defense of Trump or an indictment of Biden, just cold, hard economic data.
For some fucking reason, the media has decided that they’d rather have a fascist in power, than a moderate democrat. They all seem to be playing up the negatives, at the expense of anything positive he’s done.
They just want to live in interesting times, in the hopes that they get pulitzers for covering the misery the GOP causes us all.
You can get a pack of 100 latex party balloons for under 10 bucks from the store, but if you want to buy one that actually floats from a street vendor you could easily end up paying a couple bucks for a single balloon due to the cost of inflation.
I blame corporate ownership of media outlets putting profit over people. It’s the conservative way, right? I don’t believe they care about awards for journalism. This is why so many reporters (and pols who witnessed unethical and criminal acts committed by members of the previous administration) refused to reveal any details that could get in the way of their book deals.
I hope folks like that get what they deserve. If they throw the masses under the bus for leaders who would happily shut down all media in favor of a few state news sources, those enablers won’t just be needing tips for finding cheaper groceries. They’ve made their complicity and greed all too clear.
Not to mention questions like: is the inflation for “Hungry-Man Boneless Fried Chicken 16 oz” representative of chicken in general? or is the inflation rate for “Hungry-Man Boneless Fried Chicken 32 oz” completely different?
Yeah, I’m getting very irritated by all the coverage of the rampant “inflation” that doesn’t mention the profiteering driving a lot of it. (Ahem, gas prices.)
NYT had another one just today.
We need some enforceable anti-trust laws passed, but it’s going to be hard to get public support if nobody knows that’s why their stuff is more expensive.
You know… have you thought about donating extra seedlings to a local community garden in your area? This is actually one of the things that have been floated to address food deserts, community gardens and food forests.
I haven’t really looked into it, shame on me. Last year I put a sign by the sidewalk saying “Free plants” but got no takers. I probably discarded 50 tomato plants last year. But I’ll look into it this year.
I’ve been at my current job a year mid-April and finally last week after much pestering on my part was offered a raise - of 5%. When I insisted that a 5% increase in salary against 8.5% inflation was actually a 3.5% pay CUT my boss was livid. “I’m responsible for inflation now?!?” I asked for 15 hoping to get 10 and got 8.3 “And don’t ask for anything else!!”
Meanwhile gas has doubled and the cost of my hay is 300% from last year
