this post was submitted on 28 Dec 2023
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A Boring Dystopia

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[–] [email protected] 302 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (5 children)

Stop saying this is inflation.

It's the result of a handful of corporations owning the majority of food products.

And then realizing people need food regardless of cost, and if they all raise prices at the same time there's very few other options.

It's price gouging, plain and simple.

Quick edit:

The graphic is from Faux News....

Obviously it's going to misrepresent this

[–] [email protected] 61 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

Of course it's bullshit. The sky always has to be falling on Faux News, that's how they keep the viewers scared, angry, and watching.

MSN puts it at about $50:

https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/markets/kevin-mccallister-s-grocery-haul-in-home-alone-in-1990-was-20-see-what-it-would-cost-now/ar-AA1ldFjI

Even Snopes puts it at about $50 (last year's pricing): https://www.snopes.com/articles/464088/kevin-groceries-home-alone-cost-today/

So Fox, as usual, is full of fearmongering shit.

I'm not trying to downplay the idea that stuff is getting too damn expensive, it really is out of hand, just that Fox is garbage.

[–] [email protected] 27 points 8 months ago

This is the end game for corporations in a capitalist economy. You start with a bunch of little companies. They eventually winnow themselves out until there's only a few companies. Those companies then form a monopoly or a cartel and then they dictate prices to the consumers. All the while they're decreasing their costs and providing the least amount of product for the highest price.

It's a race to the bottom. Unfortunately this system is all we've got.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

Yeah this is a bad post. Thanks for calling it out.

[–] [email protected] 69 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Delete this, this is wrong on so many levels. 1 it's FOX News bullshit, 2 the numbers don't even add up. You're spreading misinformation.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 8 months ago

It's so depressing when you remember that some of the stupidest voters in the country (of which there are a LOT) watch fox news as their only source of news. Has there ever been a larger propaganda outlet throughout history? I guess China and Russia probably have government controlled TV stations that rival it in terms of audience numbers.

[–] [email protected] 52 points 8 months ago

1990? Oh I remember it. In Brazil they wouldn't be listing the year though, but the month - hyperinflation was raging on, back then. (I remember the 100 cruzeiro coins. They were cute.)

Anyway. The number doesn't match any pair of prices:

  • from '90 to '22 (32y): 224%
  • from '22 to '23 (1y): 162%
  • from '90 to '23 (33y): 364%

And one detail that they didn't mention is that +100%~200% between the 90s and the 20s is not a big deal, but +60% in a single year is a big fucking deal. That smells artificial as fuck, reinforcing what people have been saying here about not being inflation but price gouging.

[–] [email protected] 42 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (3 children)

But $72.28 is 364% of $19.83

Where's their number coming from (I get they might be showing percentage increase, but even -100 didn't add up)

[–] [email protected] 37 points 8 months ago

Where's their number coming from

Their ass, it's Fox News.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Sad thing is that a 364% increase from 1990 to 2023 didn't even feel that big to me. In my country the price probably increased between 1000% and 1500% in this period (considering our local currency). However in USD the same items are probably still cheaper here than they are in America.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (1 children)

So apparently the shop was: 2L milk, 2L orange juice, 2 ready meals, loaf of bread, dryer sheets, toilet paper, washing liquid, cling film, and some toy soldiers

I'm not sure what that would add up to in Brazil (going by your instance), but I'd guess that shop would cost me around £50 in today's money, which is roughly in line with the amount in the OP (and would have probably been close to half that a couple of years ago)

Looks like the amount in the OP concerts to about 350 Real, but I'm not sure what sort of spending power that has

[–] [email protected] 2 points 8 months ago

That's about a week of minimum wage. If I'm not too far off in my price estimation I think the same groceries would cost half that much here.

[–] [email protected] 25 points 8 months ago (2 children)

248 %? Where is that number coming from? 1990 to 2022 is 224 % or 124 % increase. 1990 to 2023 is 364 % or 264 % increase. Additionally, the 2023 spike is not because of inflation. Inflation was not 63 % in one year.

[–] [email protected] 26 points 8 months ago

What? Are you saying that Faux Noise would tell another bald face lie like the election was stolen or vaccines are harmful?

/s because Fox News viewers are so stupid

[–] [email protected] 23 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

If you're quoting fox "news", fuck you.

This is just weak disinformation spreading.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 8 months ago
[–] [email protected] 7 points 8 months ago (1 children)

That was 33 years ago. The equivalent of 1957 grocery store prices vs. 1990 prices.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 8 months ago

Kids these days. I remember when this was a forest and you could get a piece of pie and a newspaper for a quarter

[–] [email protected] 4 points 8 months ago

Lyn Alden's book Broken Money has convinced me that the issue is that our monetary system is fundamentally broken. A sobering read.