Also, somewhat related, the same year dairyland stopped putting handles on their 4 litre ice cream pails. The little old ladies freaked out. Turns out, nobody likes the ice cream, they just wanted the bucket with the handle. I remember asking the dairyland driver why they took the handles off. He said someone figured out the company would save 1¢ per bucket if they removed the handles saving them over a million dollars a year or something. I still wonder whether the drop in sales from people annoyed at the loss of the handle countered the savings of removing the handle.
Why would I buy your bucket if I can get this bucket full of ice cream for super cheap? Who even cares if the icecream isn't great, the alternative is just air in an empty bucket?
160 / 140 yields 14% increase in price per unit, and (1 - 140 / 160) yields a discount of 12.5%.
But also, this isn't necessarily an indicator of inflation simply due to debt financing / monetary policy -- recall that in the early days of the pandemic, there were severe shortages of paper and cleaning products (TP anyone?). If inflation were in fact in the double digits, I'd expect to see it across the board (e.g. in the price of eggs / milk which you can't play as many games with).
New construction being much more expensive would certainly add supply-side pressure. Add to that hesitancy toward showing places during a global pandemic and pent-up demand, and I'm not surprised that the cost of housing is up.
I'd expect that if your local cost-of-living increases were in fact due to inflation, we'd see it broadly across the country, which doesn't seem to be the case. Not to say that there aren't places with significant increases in rent! But it's more likely a local phenomenon than a nationwide one.
https://www.apartmentguide.com/blog/apartment-guide-annual-r... shows the biggest increase is in 2BR apartments at around 5%, but near the 10% that you're experiencing (meanwhile, studios are actually down in price over that same period). That suggests to me that demand is shifting toward larger apartments (perhaps in the context of wanting more WFH space). And, it seems largely driven by less-expensive rental markets -- the biggest declines were expensive places like SF and NYC where people decided there wasn't much value in being in the city when everything was shut down and they didn't need to go to the office.
(Also, YoY comparisons are maybe weird right about now since you're comparing the peak of pandemic fear/uncertainty with us hopefully rounding the corner with broader vaccine uptake and caseloads dropping in the US.)
I felt like (in some cases at least) it was deceptive implying the quantity of product was larger. The deception is a bit of a problem but the larger problem is "do we need that much wasteful packaging?". It's really environmentally unfriendly between useless production and disposal.
I personally don't care for bulk bins and cloth shopping bags, but this is a bit out of control.
Look at how much stuff you throw away each week. Maybe we could tax packaging somehow and make it more efficient?
I think the beancounters have realized we've all been so brainwashed to by huge packages that they've adjusted the pricing to compensate and take away any price savings
Is $.33/oz a better deal than $5/pound? How about $.31/oz?
[1] https://www.chewy.com/royal-canin-veterinary-diet-renal/dp/2...
In the U.S, you can get an 8.9oz box, a 12oz box, and an 18oz box.
Honey nut Cheerios? Oh, those come in a 10.8oz box, a 15.4oz box, or a 19.5 oz box.
You would be forgiven for thinking these boxes have remained constant over time, or that you could compare boxes between the exact same brand and class of product.
You're probably not going to see it in like a local corner store, but those places you know you're paying a higher price already.
RFD is an amazing (Canadian) forum officially focused on shopping deals, but it is much more than that.
Just like HN, and maybe even more so, RFD has a user base very diverse in its expertise. People help each other make the best choice when making purchases.
As an example of this forum's impact on Canadian economy, consider this mega-thread started in 2006 (15 years ago) and still going strong (3668 pages) where a group mortgage brokers help people get significantly better deals compared to major banks (we are talking savings of $10-15k per 5 years): https://forums.redflagdeals.com/official-mortgage-rates-thre...
There are similar threads about renovating your house, buying a heat-pump, buying an electric car, buying a PS5 without scalpers, etc.
i.e. the price per sheet is identical to the previous package. But the package is smaller.
