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The thing is gas has been high before many a times since 2001 and I’m sure inflation adjusted, higher than it is today. Let’s stop making excuses for theft
It’s diesel more than gas. When the Ukraine war started the price of diesel diverged from the price of gas worldwide because most countries embargoed Russian diesel, so it lowered supply, and it’s stayed up ever since and now more cuz of Iran war.
My landlord is a trucker in the states. She drives refers (Refrigerated trucks), her diesel for 2 days of driving was $1400 two days ago. She owns her own truck and the other costs/fees/licensing/cleaning/parking on top of the gas is crazy and some how she manages to make a decent living. ALL OF THES COSTS are paid by the consumer. Shipping costs are inflating these products more than most people realize.
Tangent #1:
Lastly I think this data is a little skewed. I saw a $24/lb Ribeye last week at a Sprouts store in Aurora, CO. Last lb of 80/20 hamburger (minced) I bought was $7.99/lb. Meat is so high that Kroger hardly advertises it in their weekly ads. It used to have it's own page! (Below)
Tangent #2:
San Diego, is pretty expensive with groceries, but some how, my favorite store in San Diego (La Mesa), Vine Ripe, is still able to sell halal meats at a decent price! (Below) This just amazes me, $5.99 Porterhouse. $4.99 T-Bone. 36 X-Large Eggs are $5 when I pay $2.99/doz at a Kroger? WTF is going on? I miss this store so much! They have all the veggies that the big stores reject and my veggies don't need to be perfect shapes LMFAO. If you look through the ads they're like pre-COVID prices.
The Weekly ads (These are the ads for the date you click them and will change weekely):
Bottling for reasonable shelf life is a bit more complicated, and empty bottles take up the same amount of space on the truck, even if they are lighter.
Only less educated people who live on vibes hold that view.
Because price hikes become headlines but price drops don't. So they are perpetually living with the assumption that prices only go up.
Meanwhile most price charts go up and down.
If you asked an illiterate person, they'll say something like gas companies only hike prices. Never drop them. But the price chart shows wild swings up and down.
these graphs follow a 6 year period and are clearly trending up. A 50% price increase followed by a 25% decrease is still a 25% increase even with a price drop involved.
I just remember going to Jewel Osco in wisconsin back in early 2000s with my mom getting it. Cheap sodas too. Just crazy how cheap pizza is now doing disorno prices
Which is exactly why the price is so volatile. It's a complete luxury, which means the price will always be whatever the market can bear, rather than tied in any way to real human needs.
Do 2005-2019 instead and put 2020-2025 next to it. They should line up pretty well, only the percentage change in the first page took three times longer to hit than the second page we see here. Thats roughly the story of all expenses, services, and products. The previous five years matched the pace of the prior fifteen and the pace has only accelerated over the last year. Both timeframes had their own crises, but covid was absolutely different. Businesses may have taken a hit, but corporations throttled the pace already making record profits and unlike the pandemic their over-compensating for losses that never happened still hasnt ended.
It’s so labor intensive. My family has coffee growing on their property, I thought it would be fun to roast our own. We spent ALL DAY picking and shucking beans just to end up with barely a pound.
I’m sure it’s more efficient with the right equipment but it was really eye opening.
As a Canadian, no it's not mostly tariffs. Coffee has nearly doubled in price here too since pre-covid. It's environmental in coffee-growing regions, and cost of transportation, and tariffs (for you guys at least)
It's crazy. I often visit a local cafe and two years ago it was $3.00 for a small drip coffee, not it's almost $5.00, plus they auto ask for a 20% tip on a DRIP COFFEE.
I buy whole beans and my favorite brand went from $16.99 to $24.99 in two years. I tried to shop around for a different brand and it just made my mornings sad. So I’m trading that $ loss for something else, like generic TP. Some things are just too important.
Two-ish years ago I cut back on coffee. I no longer habitually drink it every morning and now I only get a good cup when I feel tired. It’s really helped my energy levels and I no longer worry about a caffeine headache.
The mediocre stuff (not the cheapest pre ground but also not the most expensive locally roasted stuff) is running $14/lb near me now. It’s insane. I thought $9 was high a few years ago.
The mediocre stuff (not the cheapest pre ground but also not the most expensive locally roasted stuff) is running $14/lb near me now. It’s insane. I thought $9 was high a few years ago.
Here in Michigan, in 2021/2022 I could get a 2lb. bag of Biggby beans at Costco for $9.89. Average before COVID was around $11. That same bag of coffee is now $17.89.
Bread is the one that really pissed me off. It's just fucking bread, 4 ingredients, why is a loaf of bread from the bakery $7? But the real kicker was when I was looking at the bread at my local grocery and they were moldy. Moldy bread for $7!!!
I started baking it myself and for $3 I can get a bag of flour and $7 a jar of yeast.
I realize I could get the cheap sliced sandwich bread, but I'm not really fan of it, and it's hard to go back.
The war wouldn’t be affecting the price of bread in the US. The vast majority of flour in the US and the wheat grown for it is domestic, and most of the wheat the US does import is from Canada
Just like rice cooker. It is really not that much more difficult.
The bread makers I had were as simple as put the ingredients, press start and come back to ready made loaf. Yes. The most work is to clean it up (probably in dishwasher) and pour ingredients.
I've been noticing this, it seems like any kind of bread I get goes moldy sooner than I remember. Or maybe I just have it sitting around longer because I'm trying to stretch things out.
This. Humans have been making bread for thousands of years. It isn’t rocket science. Given the shit quality and cost of bread in the US, just buy a couple of bread pans and start baking. Of all recipes out there, bread is one of the easier ones.
This right here folks. I lost jobs and took several paycuts and layoffs since 2020. After business started to dry up for me around 2024, with heavy resentment I took a low wage for a PT skilled job beginning of 2025. Got injured, and then took a mindboggingly low wage ($16/hr) for a remote-but-local job just to survive (highest cost of living area in the country) while disabled.
Got laid off two weeks ago due to market downturn, now I make $0.
But yeah, your point. If you aren't getting raises to match inflation (even the tame and deceitfully low CPI metrics), you are quite simply taking a pay cut.
That must be some special brand or you live in Hawaii. I got store brand Target yesterday, one gallon, under $4. This is in California too, one of the most expensive states.
I'd tracked deli Roast Beef through covid, and in general around 2020 it was typically going for $13.99/lb. It's now in 2026 at typically $19.99/lb at same store and brand and such.
I heard that cheese and butter are actually super cheap right now because of the protein craze. Whey, typically a byproduct of cheese production, is now actually the main product (most protein powders use whey protein).
Dairy seems to be fairing better than most things on this list, milk has the second lowest inflation after cheese. I wonder if the industry has any extra insulation that protects the prices from skyrocketing as fast as everything else.
I mean these would look more reflective of their inflation if the scales werent so wide. You don't have to start every graph at zero when no data falls anywhere near there.
The US has little to very few laws in terms of animal welfare, quality control, minimum salaries (in some states) or health impact.
Saying that, in the UK, the basic batch of eggs, is probably around £2-3 (2.60-3.90$) a dozen, I think most of the difference is just the cage chickens.
All of this is included in inflation calculations by the same organization. If you don’t believe the 3.4% number then why do you believe these numbers?
Well we also ended most federal support for food banks. Food makes up a disproportionate amount of the monthly budget as overall income decreases, so it impacts them exactly as you would imagine. We have made it nearly impossible to survive at or near the poverty line.
The data itself is fascinating, and the use of graphs to show it is fine, but the representation could use some work. Much of these have very slightly upwards facing lines, accompanied with staggering figures.
These are specific food goods. Food is a minority of CPI. Most people don’t spend most of their income on food.
TVs, Internet, Phone data, all have gotten much cheaper and still are expenses we make.
And of course, these aren’t inflation rates. They are overall change in prices during that time period. Inflation is an annual rate of change. Unless you are in Argentina where it gets reported as a monthly rate.
Can't put my finger on it, but something about the scale of these charts is off. Like at a glance it's not obvious many things have doubled in price. Maybe they just need to be taller generally.
Why 2020, wasn’t the price much lower in 2019? I see people putting graphs as if 2019 never existed, after that year is when all companies increased the prices and all of them said this was the price the whole time.
I live in Michigan and I got a tray of chicken thighs for $1.49/lb a few days ago. Over the summer I was able to find them for around $1.10/lb but I guess the price has gone up a bit.
Depends on what caused the inflation. Fast growing economy? Yes. Print too much money with no return? No No. Start a war and have oil price skyrocketed, along side with everything else? No No No.
Not surprised at Coffee going up as it has become an art form basically, though I do wonder if this is including all coffee if so I wonder what has happened to the cheapest forms. Cause like there have been some ostentatious forms of coffee that have come out in the last while that are more like a dessert or wine than folgers. Anybody else find it funny that milk has gone up 30% but cheese, the product made from milk, has only gone up 15%, that's bizarre right?
The headline inflation rate is expressed as an annual rate. 3.7% annual inflation for six years and eight months is 27.4% cumulative inflation. Also, the items on this chart were specifically chosen because they had higher price increases than average.
Hey man, nobody wants your facts in here, got it? Just because wages are up more than inflation and the cost of food is mostly only up a little more than inflation doesn’t mean this isn’t the hardest moment in all of human history to just survive.
You can be happy if you have a mortgage which is below 5%. You can be happy if your car loan is below 5-6%.
You could be happy if your salary increased by 4-6% per year.
Yes, inflation is bad and western countries used to have it around 2% but that was abnormal. Also housing pricing is also abnormal. But thats a different topic.
My point is: This is normal inflation and it will stay with us longer.
Good article. Thank you. Price gouging customers, then they pay a little fine and it’s all good. Especially when it was obvious they were colluding to raise prices. These mega corporations are cancer on society.
These prices are incredibly conservative averages. I have pretty routine Costco and Grocery deliveries and checking in on orders from 2019/2020 I'm up over 100% on essentially every item. And that doesn't take into account items that got smaller along with a price increase.
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u/cavedave OC: 115 23d ago
Thank you for your Original Content, /u/madredditscientist!
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