The Inflation Thread 2021-22

[kcmets]

Boars Head pastrami here -- $13.25/lb

[kcmets]

Gas has leveled off here at the $3.49 mark the last couple of weeks.

[Fman99]

I stopped making steaks on the grill here. Used to be I could buy two NY Strip Steaks for $11 or so at my local Wegmans. They're over $20 now. Sorry, not paying that to feed half my family one meal.

[kcmets]

Yeah, meat has gone nuts, especially the good stuff. We had pot roast all week,
boneless chuck @ $3.49/lb which isn't too bad.

[Ceetar]

We've been taken for a ride by our corporate overlords. They saw a minor blip in things last March and took the opportunity to jack up the prices on everything to make up for it. And now they're all balking because their slave labor doesn't want to work for slave wages despite said corporate overlords absolutely raking in the dough at record rates.

[MFS62]

$1.69 for a gallon of Poland Spring water.
WATER!!!!
And the super market brand went up from $.99 to $1.29.
I have to drink bottled water because our local water is hard and we use a water softener. I can't drink the house water because of the salt used in the softener.
Yikes!

Later

[kcmets]

I drink a lot of water too. Shop-Rite pretty much weekly has some kind of water sale
but you have buy three cases or such. Last Sunday I got 6 3-liter bottles (a little less than
a gallon) for a dollar a pop but you had to buy six but seems reasonable.

[Lefty Specialist]

If you're buying water in a bottle, anything over about 10 cents is overpaying. And about 9 3/4 cents of that cost would be the bottle.

People are jacking up prices currently now because they can get away with it; everything's blamed on 'supply chain issues'. There are supply chain issues (I could talk for an hour about them because it's my field), but the price of, say, gasoline has nothing to do with them- that's just OPEC squeezing right now. And there's no good reason for your Cocoa Puffs to cost 20% more.

Meanwhile I walked into a Best Buy today and the place was bursting with TV's. They were practically blocking the entrance. No supply chain issue there.

[kcmets]

I drink bottled water here because our tap water sucks.

Smells and tastes like swimming pool (without the urine).

[Fman99]

Our tap water is fine - I drink it out of our fridge's water dispenser every day. But we also keep bottled water handy because it's easy to grab one as you head out the door. A 35 pack of 16.9 oz waters still only cost $4 at Wegmans which is pretty cheap.

[Ceetar]

as long as we're talking water, those metal cups that are all the rage these days (not the Yetis, though there were plenty of people filling up Yetis with booze in Mexico) work really nicely for keeping water/other chilled all day.

[kcmets]

Got a heating oil delivery today. Expected sticker shock per gallon but it
was pretty reasonable compared to the increasing gasoline nonsense going
on here. Supermarket too. Saw 90% lean hamburger this week @8.15/lb.

[MFS62]

Got a heating oil delivery today. Expected sticker shock per gallon but it was pretty reasonable compared to the increasing gasoline nonsense going
on here.

Same thing. I got a heating oil delivery @ $3.09 per gallon, which surprised me that it was less than the $3.45 - $3.49 local price for regular gas.

Later

[Lefty Specialist]

Gas by me has dropped by about 15 cents a gallon in the last month, but there haven't been any screaming headlines about it.

[kcmets]

Gasoline has stopped rising here, but it's still up 60-70% in just one short year.
I know it was a coincidence, but the rise started on Inauguration Day.

[Lefty Specialist]

Gas prices crashed when the economy shut down in 2020, you realize that, right? Gas was also pretty cheap in late 2008 and early 2009. Gas prices fluctuate but it's a supply and demand thing more than who's in the White House. Right now OPEC has been pretty good at holding the line on production and demand has been coming back due to a recovering economy (provided Omicron doesn't lock things down again).

[Willets Point]

The non-inflated truth about inflation.

[metsmarathon]

no! the corporations only care about the welfare of the consumer, and keep our costs low by competing fairly amongst each other. is... is that not so...?

[Edgy MD]

America could stand to bust up some anti-trust initiatives and monopolies again.

[kcmets]

Corporation bashing can be fun, I do it all the time. If these companies would
'pay their fare share' of taxes then they wouldn't be swimming in dough. Biden
is going to fix this! How do I know? He told us every day up until he was elected.
Now nary a word on the subject.

I imagine an awful lot of people reading this own Procter & Gamble (for example)
'stock' in one form or another.

[kcmets]

55 Corporations Paid $0 in Federal Taxes on 2020 Profits

[kcmets]

Got a heating oil delivery today. Expected sticker shock per gallon but it
was pretty reasonable...

$3.89/gallon earlier this week, up ~$0.75/gallon. That's a big % in 2 months.
And the tank was pretty bare so over $1,000... yay team!

[Chad ochoseis]

That argument would be a lot stronger if restaurants weren't also increasing prices 12 months ago because COVID.

I was getting gas today ($3.34/gallon, which is the highest I've ever seen it in Ohio) and saw that same ridiculous Biden sticker. As Lefty said above, it's a supply and demand thing. As the COVID crisis waned, there was always going to be inflation as demand would increase faster than supply chains could get up to capacity again.

[kcmets]

I know, and just because I repeat something I've seen doesn't mean
I subscribe to it or believe it. A lot of people I know eat this shit up on
social media and it's a large portion of our nations 'news" source.

If things don't improve soon, the "are you better off today than you were
two years ago?" thing is gonna be huge in November.

[Chad ochoseis]

Yep... figured you didn't believe it. Was in the spirit of a comment, not an argument.