A lot of food prices moved up during the crude oil price run-up to $147.00 during 2007 and 2008, and I’ve only noticed a few that came back down a small amount. Items like mayonnaise and cooking oil, and flour and meal jumped 50% or so are and are still at that level.
Just one of the ways in which we are paying for the so-called “green fuels” whether we use them or not.
I thought I was experiencing hyperinflation in vegetables a few months ago but it turned out that the cashier’s belly was adding weight to the scale.
Yet WalMart same store sales are down 1.5% from last year because their prices have dropped.
I have made several comments about the prices at Walmart tripling in some cases.
Dog food, cat food and cat litter is one that is unbelievable at the price increase.
One cannot measure inflation by taking a few products as examples. I bought a Garmin GPS recently that was half the price it was three years ago...I bought a Cabela’s electric fillet knife that usually sells for $29.99 for $9.99 and within two weeks of being off the sales price it went down to $16.99. But, again those are not adequate to talk about inflation or deflation alone. We can look at larger trends for that. The most recent Wholesale Price Index was down. That doesn’t happen in inflationary times...
But, to simplify the discussion. When we talk about inflation we are talking about supply and demand for money. If we grow money supply too much that is inflation.
Specific product price increases may have something to do with it’s own supply and demand forces...than with inflation/deflation. So, we use aggregate prices and money supply estimates to determine if we have inflation.
although frankly I think one of the problems is that by now WalMart has managed to clear the field of much of their competition. (logically you had to figure that once they achieved that prices would be going up). Also they appear to be caving to the Green activists, which costs money.
You used to buy a 64 ounce container of Ice Cream as a half gallon. Then the manufacturers changed the shape of the containers to an ovoid and put 56 ounces in a ‘half gallon’. The other day, I bought Ice Cream and the new ovoid package says 48 ounces in the ‘half gallon’ size. Oh, and the price has crept up from 2.50 per container at 64 ounces to almost $4 per. Then there are the smoked almonds ...
As a matter of principle (however it may be flawed), I try to avoid Wallyworld for grocery purchases.
The trick with Kroger is to buy lots when they run their specials, and try to minimize the pain on other items. In my neck of the woods, a family-owned grocery chain tends to pile stuff high and sell it cheap, so fortunately, I’ve got that option.
As for grocery prices, anything with corn or connected to corn has gone through the roof since we started putting ethanol in gasoline. I understand they’ve about maxed out the amount of gasoline they can cut with it, and still keep non - E85 vehicles running.
Generally, every grocery chain will run a special on protein once a month. That’s the time to stock up. Watch the ads for a while, and a pricing strategy for that chain will emerge.
Folger’s Gourmet Supreme Coffee in the 27.8 ounce plastican at Meijer
2009 $9.98
Yesterday, not on sale $7.49
The Bastards!
(When on sale, it breaks under $6.00 usually.)
Sorry - I shop at WalMart for most of my grocery items, including saline solution. The same size bottle of Equate brand is $2.00 and has been for as long as I can remember.
Groceries have also stayed more or less where they were 6 months ago.
I see no signs of hyperinflation there.
My yardstick is eating lunch out. Partly because I eat more-or-less the same things, at more-or-less the same type places. Furthermore, I'm eating out less and less to save money, so I'm more sensitive to fluctuations in price.
It used to be that a non-fast-food "cheap lunch" - think Mexican, or Sandwiches, or Chinese - would be about 5 bucks. Sometimes a tip, sometimes not, depending on where we went. $25-30 a week was a good budget.
Now, it's hard to find a non-fast-food lunch for that same five bucks. It's usually now between 8 and 10, with a tip bringing it to $12 not being uncommon. $50, minimum, would be the budget (if I ate out every day, which I don't anymore. Once about every other week is what I'm now doing, since I took a 10% paycut....)
So, restaurant prices in this neck of the woods have about doubled.
One of my duties at my current job is to do price changes, and they are all over the place, but more prices are going up than down. Of course, gas prices are going up again, so that will make the cost of everything on the shelves go up.
I noted it to a friend of mine. A set of Allen sockets from McMasterCarr in 2004 was $74. Today it’s around $150. You also see it in Dairy, Meat, and Poultry (eggs, wings, breasts etx). Prices have doubled in the last 18 months.
Not yet. How are your wages doing? How is your house doing? There are huge deflationary pressures in the economy right now due to the destruction of the credit bubble, despite moderate inflationary pressures in food and energy. People have cut their spending way back, and that's anything but inflationary. Hyperinflation may well come - Obama dreams of it - but it's a while off, yet.
I’ve noticed in a few supermarkets where products were once on sale for $1.99 are now on sale for 2/$5...the $2.99 features have been replaced with 2/$7.
It’s real difficult to get out of a store for less than $100 and actually have something to eat for dinner for a couple of days.
Discount markets that used to be ‘rock bottom’ are now ‘a pebble of a difference’
However, starting about a couple years ago, my wife and I started some belt-tightening. Not so much out of need but out of a sense of wanting to see if we could "make do with less" as our kids are now grown up and we head towards our retirement years.
I was absolutely shocked with how much money I could save just by paying careful attention to what I was buying and paying for. We now buy most of our household items in bulk at the the Costco or Sam's Club. We get a lot of generic brands. For example, a 99 cent bottle of generic hair shampoo gets our hair just as clean as those six dollar bottles of designer shampoos in those fancy, colorful, over-designed bottles (and those bottles hold a lot less product too).
Instead of bottled water, we filter it at the tap (can't tell the difference). We do a lot more cooking from scratch and was amazed to discover that we could easily cut our grocery bill by more than half just by eliminating the pre-prepared "heat-and-eat" type foods.
Getting back to the article, being that buy mostly bulk and generic items, we are not noticing a lot of increases in what we are buying. However, I am sorry to report that the price of beer has increased significantly here in Massachusetts, due to the recently imposed "sin tax" on alcohol. Might have to start getting my beer in New Hampshire.
Yet I see it every day.
I smell really bad cheese! and it's coming from Bam bam's government.